Greg Chappell resigns

Chappelli's little brother (Chappellg?) has just resigned as coach of India. His resignation letter seems to have been accepted with unseemly haste by the BCCI and - although he cites "personal reasons" for his resignation - Greg couldn't resist a dig at his former charges before he left.

Chappell's resigniation letter doles out some effusive praise to the BCCI, the media, support staff, family and Indian cricket fans. But he doesn't have an awful lot to say about his former charges. And what he does have to say is a bit waspish:

"I am grateful to the players with whom I have worked in this time for the challenges that they presented me with and which I tried to meet in a professional, methodical and interesting way in the interests of the team and the individual."

Translation: "Thanks for teaching me how not to deal with arseholes".

Mind you, the players don't seem particularly happy about things either. Even the usually restrained Sachin Tendulkar had a bit of an outburst.

But this is my favourite response. In it a journalist asked Anil Kumble if Chappell's style created any insecurity amongst the players. Kumble replied "yeah, probably because of the way he approached [coaching]. That is his style". Kumble then got into a bit of an argument with the journalist, implying that the media needs to take some responsibility for inventing stories out of nothing. So what was the headline for the article? "Veteran Indian Spinner Anil Kumble Attacks Coach Greg Chappell". And the first line? "Veteran Indian spinner Anil Kumble today made a veiled attack on cricket coach Greg Chappell, saying his style may have created insecurity among players."

Oh, the irony. A journalist gets attacked for manufacturing stories, but ignores the attack and uses a non-committal answer to a loaded question to manufacture a headline about something completely different instead. You just couldn't make it up.