It's in the air...

Yep, the flavour of the time seems to be interview. So here's one, which may not be there on any site yet. One of the regulars on the blog, neelan, has apparently translated the whole tv chat of Greg Chappel with Harsha and Ravi. I'm highlighting some parts I thought were important in current context.

Neelan, thanks again mate, great work.

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This is what Chappel had to say abt the match, controversy in a discussion at the end of the match with Harsha, Sunny and Shastri

Harsha : Irfan Pathan, the man of the match, has a pretty good game isnt it?

GC:Yes its a very good all round performance, He's worked very hard on all aspects of his game, fielding, batting as well as bowling. He is swinging the new ball well and he bowled a good length in this game, he felt he was little short on the first day, the second morning and the last evening, I thought he bowled pretty well

Ravi: Greg, good performance by India to win this game, but how do you take it forward to Harare? Do you want certain things to improve even more when you go into Harare?

GC: Yes Ravi, we have just got to keep working on those process, have to stop worrying about outcomes, you get ahead of yourself or you start falling behind yourself thinking abt how things could have been better, and I think if we can continue to get our process right, bowl the ball in the right areas, put pressure on the opposition both with the ball and in the field and put pressure on the opposition by scoring runs and running well between the wickets, these are things we are judging ourselves at the moment and we need to keep improving in those areas. Zimbabwe is an young team an inexperienced team, we will get more pressure than they were able to put on us from other teams, so we need to keep developing those process

Harsha: And as well Greg as I suspect get rid of the irritants that can sometimes come in the way of process, that seems to the process is confined to what happens in the team meetings and on what happens on the ground, Sometimes they can be irritants to the process and we need to debug it as quickly as possible

GC: Yeah, there are some things that you cant control obviously Harsha, what things are being said outside in the media by supporters whatever, we cant worry about that, we have to concentrate and focus on what we are doing and we are attempting to do that and hopefully get better at it.

Harsha: Well you have never played in India Greg, but I guess the process of understanding India is well under way, having been a month and a half into this job and as you know we Indias are very passionate cricket followers and want to know everything about the side, Is there is a little reassurance that you want to give to this Indian side that look there is a lot happening there in the media, but this Indian side will continue to play the kind of cricket you wanted them to play?

GC: Well thats what we can do, and thats what we want to do, Obviously we are happy that so many people follow the Indian team so closely but from time to time it can be intrusive if we let it and its important that we focus on what we are doing and whatever happens outside the group we cant control and we cant spend too much time worrying about, we just got make sure that we keep doing what we do as well as possible

Harsha: Was it a bother though, the fact that somuch attention is devoted to things that happened off the field than on the field?

GC, Oh not really, I have been thru all this stuff before Harsha, always going to be something bubbling around the place, once it gets a bit of oxygen it can take off and be blown out of all proportions, we cant worry about these things like that and get involved in it, we have to keep focusing on what we are doing.

Harsha: And looking ahead to Harare, I know historical stats dont have too much meaning but India has never won a test match, infact lost two

GC: Thankyou verymuch for reminding this. Obviously again we cant control what happened in the past and all we can do is look forward to whats coming up next week and prepare ourselves as well as possible, I have been very happy with the way the guys have performed, training sessions have been very good, very enthusiastic, the support staff have done a fantastic job, all in all we are doing as much as possible what we can do at the moment and we just got to keep winning, get into a habit of winning, it takes a lot of pressure off in lot of areas

Harsha: There are a couple of aspects a lot of people in India would be focussing on in the next 3 or 4 days, is how this team get its act together because there has been a few things said in recent times by couple of lead batsmen and obviously thats not going to help matters, whats the team going to do to get everyone together, maybe just say look our job is to play cricket

GC: Well yeah we have talked about those issues and I mean as things come up from time to time, people get frustrated, say things that perhaps they dont really mean or as important as they are made out to be, again its a matter of focussing on the process and if we can continue to have success, I think lot of these other issues just fade away

Ravi: Greg, what time you playing golf with Sourav tomorrow

GC: Probably in the afternoon sometime I would think

Harsha: Did you have a long chat with him, because the way he played, bcause lot of us here have watched Sourav Ganguly bat for the last 9 years now, and hardly ever seen this kind of batting from him, grafting out 6 hrs to score a hundred, was that something you have talked about this kind of innings as well together

GC: We have talked about a whole range of issues, including batting, captaincy and all sorts of things and we continue to talk about those things but we got to understand that Sourav was under lot of pressure and obviously he also wanted to put that pressure behind him, he worked very hard to get that hundred, I would rather look at the positives and the result of the game than get involved in anything else

Harsha: One other thing we saw this morning is we havent seen too much of when Harbhajan got his 200th wicket is he bowled a lot more with fizz, that he bowled a lot more round the wicket , was it something you were experimenting with?

GC: Yes we worked on those issues with Harbhajan, looking at different angles, talking to him about different angles and different batsmen and different ways to bowl, particularly when conditions arent in favor, when ball spinning a lot sometimes its good to change the angles, Yeah he is had a bit of pressure on him as well, getting the 200th wicket I think, took the pressure off a bit, I thought he bowled pretty well this morning, So I mean its a matter of confidence, continue to take wickets, if he can do that, I am sure his bowling will only get better and better

Harsha: Ravi has talked about a round of Golf, Arun lal was here and he said you might go bungee jumping with Sourav together

GC : Well he is on his own there, I am afraid bungee is not my go

Harsha: Thankyou very much Greg for taking time off and congratulations on your first test win

GC: Thankyou very much

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