Freddie bounces Dada, Sunny intercepts

Greg had said that the skipper was physically and mentally unfit to lead. Gavaskar, here as team director of the ICC World XI to play Australia in three one-dayers and a six-day Test over the next fortnight, said: “Sourav has been portrayed as somebody who comes from a royal family. Actually his nickname is Maharaj, which is like emperor in Hindi, but I don’t think so.

“I find what little I’ve seen of him that he’s a very hard-working cricketer. He likes to get into the nets and work at his batting and bowls at the nets, a lot more than some other cricketers do. It’s just a misconception,” he said .

Commenting on the fracas, Gavaskar said he expected a ’working relationship’ would work. “We hope it won’t crop up again. India’s got a pretty busy season. We’ve got 12 one-dayers – seven against Sri Lanka, five against the South Africans – and then Sri Lanka come back (for a three-Test series), and we’re hoping that everything will be okay.

“I know it’s not always easy when you’ve had a public spat. But both are mature people and having spoken to them, the committee believes that they will put their misconceptions behind them and go forward.”

Gavaskar said Chappell and Sourav had both accepted they “might have stepped out of line just a bit” and would try to work together to take Indian cricket forward.

Flintoff, who played alongside Sourav for English county side Lancashire in 2000, said in his forthcoming autobiography: “You can accept a player not playing well, because we all have our ups and downs in our career, but he just didn’t want to get involved.