Harbhajan Singh didn’t hold back when talking about the Greg Chappell era—he called it one of the toughest times Indian cricket ever went through.
After India finished runners-up at the 2003 ODI World Cup, hopes were sky-high. Chappell came in as head coach in 2005 with huge expectations riding on his name especially with legends like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid still in the squad. Fans were buzzing but the excitement fizzled out quickly. Chappell’s time in charge turned sour pretty fast and ended with India’s shock exit during the group stage of the 2007 ODI World Cup.
On the Prakhar Gupta Podcast, Harbhajan didn’t mince words. He called those days “the darkest days of Indian cricket” and blamed Chappell for dividing the team. According to Harbhajan, “The way Chappell behaved with Dada (Ganguly), and whatever he did with the Indian team during those days, it was one of the darkest and worst chapters in the history of Indian cricket. Appointing him as head coach was one of the worst decisions made by the Indian management. He implemented a divide-and-rule policy, where he made the players fight among themselves while acting as the ruler.”
He didn’t stop there. “He spoiled the entire team. The players who played together in the 2003 ODI World Cup and shared such great bonding were no longer talking to each other. Our team was one of the strongest and most closely-knit teams, and he literally broke it apart,” Harbhajan added.
The way Harbhajan tells it, Chappell knew exactly what he was doing—he went as far as hinting that Chappell might have split the squad on purpose. India was one of the few teams pushing Australia at that time, and Harbhajan saw Chappell’s actions as a way to break up that threat.
“In my opinion, Chappell’s main strategy was something else. In those days, India were the only team that consistently challenged Australia. It’s possible that he tried to divide us so that we couldn’t play as a united team on the field and would eventually lose matches. The same thing happened during the 2007 World Cup,” he said.
After reaching the final in 2003, India crashed out in the group stage in 2007. Their most crushing defeat? Getting beaten by Bangladesh—a loss that sealed their early exit and left fans stunned.