The making of champions

The race for India's new coach had all the elements of a potboiler. There were people announcing their candidature, people pulling out and people dropping in at the very last minutes. Even the day of the interview was full of drama. Time delays, exceeding time limitations, braking down of laptops, break for some of the interviewers to meet the PM, leaked questions, everything. Our dear Jimmy Amarnath came to the interview with an Indian flag on his clothes and used the word "Bharat" multiple times in his presentation. I suppose he was trying to show that his USP is being an Indian and his only claim to the job was that he is an Indian. Then there was Desmond Haynes who dropped in at the last moment to be interviewed before Tom Moody who was touted as being the Indian players' choice.

At last Greg Chappel is all set to take over as the coach of the Indian team. It shouldn't come as a surprise because he was the frontrunner for the job. Some people believe that being from India is the most important quality required of the coach. I disagree with such people. Jimmy and Sandy may have been great cricketers and great coaches, I wouldn't comment on that, but in my opinion, none of the other applicants had the credentials that would match Chappel's.

What our team is lacking is the right attitude and proper planning. It is upto Greg Chappel now to instill a new spirit in the team and make world beaters out of them.

Finally, we have proved that we truely are not afraid to outsource some critial jobs in our country to outsiders.