Chappell On Coaching

Greg Chappell was one of the greatest test cricketers of the post war era whose skill as a captain and batsman was without peer in the 1970s and 1980s. After his retirement he moved into coaching becoming the coach of Australian state side South Australia where he was worked with many of the current Australian test team on improving their game. In this book he expounds his theories on coaching, a radical approach where the techniques of cricket are a secondary issue compared to refining the core principles of movement of the body and organising yourself and your brain to best use the abilities that you have. His experience of working with people such as Australian Test bowler show that this techniques works and this book will be an invaluable aid not only to coaches but all players who can learn something from the basic premises laid out in the book.

Greg Chappell was the outstanding Australian batsman of his generation. Though he had an appetite for big scores, it was his calm brow and courtly manner that bowlers found just as disheartening. When he followed his brother Ian into the Australian captaincy, his feat of scoring centuries in each innings of his captaincy debut has been unequalled. After retiring he went into coaching, spending some time with South Australia and working as a consultant at Pakistan’s National Cricket Academy. In 2005 he was appointed coach of the Indian national cricket team on a two-year term—a stint that included a stormy public falling out with the captain, Sourav Ganguly. He has been Head Coach of Cricket Australia’s Centre of Excellence in Brisbane and in 2010 Greg Chappell was made Cricket Australia’s first full-time selector and National Talent Manager—a position of unequalled power. In this book Greg Chappell will reflect upon how things have changed since he grew up playing cricket in his backyard with his brothers Ian and Trevor; how Australia’s fortunes have see-sawed over the years; the great teams and the great players; the scandals and the opportunities. He has been a cricketer, captain, commentator and selector—he has seen it all.

Cricket great Greg Chappell shares his thoughts on the sport's most important aspects.

Greg Chappell: Not Out brings his many years of experience to the fore to discuss Australia's favourite sport from all angles, including scandals, mental skills, and the future of the game. Greg Chappell's retirement as a cricketer was the conventional end of a great sporting career. But it was only the start of an equally lively journey. An original thinker and a peerless judge of talent, Chappell commands respect and is widely sought after for his views on all things cricket. He has seldom been away from the thick of it. Here, he tells all. Forty years since the underarm, Chappell takes us inside the secretive world of selection. He tells the story of Twenty20's forerunner Super 8s, and reveals his insights from an eventful stint as coach of India. He speaks frankly on a decade at Cricket Australia, including warning signs he saw ahead of the Newlands scandal, and calls for greater focus on the game's mental skills. Chappell also unveils a blueprint for the future of Australian cricket. He argues forcefully that the game has drifted too far from the type of lean, hungry system that helped to take the national team to the top. Greg Chappell: Not Out is a uniquely insightful and entertaining look at cricket, and a must-read for all fans of the sport.

A stylish batsman who could score against any kind of bowling, VVS Laxman played over a hundred Tests to aggregate more than 8,000 runs. Cricket fans still remember with awe his game-changing knock of 281 against Australia in 2001 at Eden Gardens. But playing for India was never easy. He was dropped as often as he was picked, and despite his vast experience and unimpeachable skill, he never made it to a World Cup team. All through his playing years, Laxman was known to be a soft-spoken man who kept his distance from controversy. Which is what makes this autobiography truly special. It's candid and reflective, happy and sad by turns, and deeply insightful. He writes of dressing-room meltdowns and champagne evenings, the exhilaration of playing with and against the best in the world, the nuances of batting in different formats and on various pitches, the learnings with John Wright and the rocky times under Greg Chappell. In 281 and Beyond, Laxman lays bare the ecstasy and the trauma of being one of the chosen XI in a country that is devoted to cricket.

Six coaches and three athletes-involved in sports from international to school-aged level-share their knowledge, stories and philosophies, offering practical insights into how athlete-centred coaching can be put into practice. These successful, athlete-centred, humanistic coaches inspire their athletes and encourage them to make informed decisions.

Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians goes deep into every Indian cricket tour since 1886—taking the reader backstage to when India played its first test in 1932, and bringing the story forward to the more contemporary IPL—to provide a complex and nuanced understanding of the evolution and maturity of the game. Equally, it comes with material that has have never entered the public domain so far—going behind the scenes of cases like Monkeygate, the suspension of Lalit Modi, spot-fixing, and the phase of judicial intervention. It carries not just reportage and analysis, but also player reminiscences, personal interviews, photographs and letters never known or discussed so far in Indian sporting discourse. Weaving together such material, Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians unflinchingly confronts questions that demand answering, among them: Has internal bickering impacted the on field performance of the Indian cricket team? Did some of our icons fail the country and the sport by trying to conceal important facts during the spot-fixing investigation? And does it matter to the ordinary fan who heads the BCCI as long as there is transparency and accountability in the system? In the end, in telling the story of the role of cricket in colonial and post-colonial Indian life, and the inter-relationship between those who patronize, promote, play and view the sport. Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians unravels the story of a nation now considered the financial nerve centre of world cricket.