Chappell dismayed by leaks

Tough love hasn't gone down too well with certain fragile egos © Getty Images Enlarge

Greg Chappell returned from Zimbabwe on Sunday, and expressed the opinion that it was unfortunate that his differences with Sourav Ganguly, the Indian captain, were made public. After arriving a day later than the rest of the squad due to the unavailability of tickets, Chappell told reporters: "I think the media gets excited at such happenings. Differences are a fairly normal thing happening in cricket. But you can understand I am not in a position to speak about it to you at this stage."

The coach-captain rift surfaced in Zimbabwe when Chappell asked Ganguly to consider his position as captain before the first Test because of his poor batting form. The spat snowballed into a major controversy last week when a confidential e-mail from Chappell to officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was leaked to the media by unknown sources.

Chappell, a former Australian captain who took over in June, reportedly said in the e-mail that Ganguly was not "physically or mentally" fit to lead the side and even threatened to quit if the captain was not changed.

"I sent a private and confidential e-mail to the president of BCCI," said Chappell. "It did not remain confidential though I would have preferred it to have remained so. What else can I say at this stage?"

Chappell and Ganguly are due to appear before a high-powered BCCI panel that includes three former captains - Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and Srinivas Venkataraghvan - in Mumbai on Tuesday to discuss the crisis.