Indian coach Greg Chappell, in his e-mail to the BCCI, had termed former national coach John Wright soft. Now Wright is giving it back.“Greg has only been on the job five months and at the moment it doesn’t look like (he and skipper Sourav Ganguly) would go on holiday together,” said Wright, who served Indian cricket for almost five years.“It looks like they’re having some teething problems at the moment and it will be interesting to see how it goes,” the former New Zealand skipper told The Age in Melbourne where he is coaching the World XI team for the Super Series against Australia.“I always looked at it this way — the team was selected for me, whoever that was, with a captain, with players. You didn’t get a vote on selection but my job was to ensure that as coach they were prepared and performed to the best of their ability,” he said.“It was almost like performance coaching and I hope we made some progress over the four years I was there.” Wright said he hoped Chappell would succeed in taking the Indian team “a little bit further”. “In any team situation there are always issues — sometimes personal, sometimes performance. You want Greg to come on and hopefully he’ll take it that little bit further. He’ll obviously do it in his own style. may be different from what I used. It’s a process,” he said.He also said that during his stint there were times when his opinion was not always appreciated by the players. “I’ve always tried to be very honest with the players (and) at times the players don’t appreciate that,” said Wright who helped India win series against Australia and Pakistan as also to a final berth in the 2003 World Cup.Wright said Indians were an extremely passionate lot when it came to cricket and that made coaching a challenging job.
