Chappell to skip Challenger Trophy

Greg Chappell, the India coach, will not be attending the Challenger Trophy tournament in Chennai from October 1 to 4, announcing that he would take a two-week break after the DLF Cup in Kuala Lumpur. The tournament is significant in that it allows the management to zoom in on potential candidates for the national side.

Niranjan Shah, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), confirmed that Chappell would join the team on October 7. Shah felt it wasn't mandatory for Chappell to be physically present each time the players take the field. "The selectors will be there as well as the coaches of all three teams," he said. "Chappell will get the required feedback from them when he returns."

India Seniors, India A and India B are the three teams in the competition, which consists of upcoming players from all over the country split into three teams of equal strength. Each side plays each other once, with the top two sides contesting the final on October 4. With the Indian squad for the Champions Trophy already announced, the Challenger Trophy would help the national selectors in identifying the bench strength for the upcoming international season, which includes the tour of South Africa from November to January.

Meanwhile, no replacements for the coach of the India Seniors team have been named yet, and Shah listed out only a couple of candidates. "There are quite a few candidates," Shah told The Times of India. "There's Lalchand Rajput (the India Under-19 coach), Robin Singh (India A coach) and a few others. We'll decide it in due course."

The BCCI has also announced that Dr Rudi Webster, the noted sports psychologist, will work with the Indian team till the World Cup next year in the West Indies. He will have three seperate sessions with the team, with the first starting 12 days before the Champions Trophy and the second ten days before a proposed one-day series at home against West Indies in January. The final session will be in Trinidad before the World Cup, where the Indian team will be based. Webster, who has worked with the all-conquering West Indies team of the '70s and '80s, had sessions with a few Indian players during the recent tour of the Caribbean and was credited with helping Virender Sehwag reverse his poor form at the start of the tour. His appointment till the World Cup was based on the recommendation of Chappell and Rahul Dravid, the Indian captain.