Suresh Raina: In my eyes, Greg Chappell was never wrong

Over the years a lot has been written and said about Gregrsquos time as India coach about how not everyone liked his style of leadership in the dressing room Greg was always resultoriented and he would make sure we achieved the results we were aiming for no matter what That was the kind of attitude I appreciated since I was just starting my career and was happy to be instructed However the senior players of the team were very different as were their respective equations with himIn hindsight he probably should have treated the senior players a bit differently than how he treated us But again thatrsquos not something that bothered me back then For me it was simple if we win we are praised if we lose we are reprimanded But his intention was to push us to grow further as cricketers and never to demean us in any way Greg had gone through a lot but had handled it all wellThe team that Dada Sourav Ganguly created has always been widely appreciated for making a mark in cricketing historyHowever the credit for so many of us youngsters making it into that team goes to Greg since he was the one who prepared us to take that challengeGreg ChappellHe and Kiran More Sir as the chief selector were the ones who supported this move Greg is the number one talenthunter He always ensured that the youngsters got their due in the Indian team And he played an enormous role in getting the likes of RP Singh MS Dhoni S Sreesanth Murali Kartik and Irfan Pathan among others to play for India with a lot of successThe Indian team during my time was like a family And like in every family there were times when everyone didnrsquot get along with each other the way you would expect them to There were some tense moments within the dressing room during Gregrsquos tenure as our coachRahul Bhai was a really good captain that way He would make sure our performances werenrsquot affected due to those issues So we as younger players would never be involved in such situations Whenever they would have their meetings we would go out for running or training and thus had no idea as to what happened behind closed doors In my eyes Greg was never wrong since he always strived to make sure the team was on its toes and never favoured any one playerGreg was ruthless when we lost but most of it was directed towards the senior players I do agree that he should have respected them moremdashpeople like Sachin Tendulkar and DadaOnce Greg had asked me to go practise a day before the match prior to the scheduled training session for that dayI remember one of the senior players of the team came up to me to mock me saying that I was the only one who got all the lsquoextrarsquo practice sessions as if it was only me who was going to play the match So I quickly asked him to join me because I had no intentions to hurt anyone For me ragging was no big deal since I was used to that thanks to my hostel life But I wouldnrsquot say anyone ever got lsquoraggedrsquo in the Indian dressing room Believe me I know what ragging is We didnrsquot have that What we did have were some tense moments with some players There were instances when we would greet some of the senior players in the morning and they wouldnrsquot greet back But I never took these to heartThere were certain players like Rahul bhai Dravid and Sachin Paaji who were revered in the dressing room They would try to keep things calm Another significant change at that time was Dravid replacing Dada as the captain So it was the accumulation of all these factors that led to the occasional unrest among the seniorsIt was a transitional period for the team Not every junior player felt comfortable in that situation But my relations with Rahul Bhai were very goodGreg emphasised a lot on technique offering us constant tips on how to give our best in the game He always asked us to play aggressively instead of going softAll this helped boost our confidence eventually After the official training hours he would stay back with us youngsters to help us prepare ourselves psychologically telling us how to handle things off the field the media being one of the focal points of these sessions This holistic training helped us a lot in the long runI think it was an extremely good decision on the part of the BCCI to have a man with his experience to come and coach us Greg always told us after every international tournament that we needed to keep going back to domestic cricketHe vouched for the importance of playing a lot of cricket to get better at playing cricket He would emphasise on the Ranji Trophy and would often come along to watch some of the games Very few international coaches do that anywhere in the worldHe wasnrsquot a gym person as such but he was brilliant with endurance training He would make us work on improving our fielding Yuvraj Singh Sachin memdashall of us benefitted from thatHe would also do things differently We would practise on cement surfaces He would make us play with stumps and hockey sticksThen he would share his own experiences with us and make us do activitybased routines like playing blindfoldedThe fact that he would involve the youngsters so much brought about a lot of structural changes within the team setting a new paradigm in team formationI picked up a lot of lessons from Greg But I think somewhere along the line despite all the controversies around his coaching career he taught India how to win and the importance of winningAlso ReadSourav Ganguly didnrsquot want to work hard Greg ChappellEdited excerpts from BELIEVE What Life and Cricket Taught Me by Suresh Raina with Bharat Sundaresan published by Penguin Random House India