Former India cricketer Aakash Chopra has shared some insight on the fallout between Sourav Ganguly and John Buchanan during the first couple of years of the Indian Premier League.
Speaking on his YouTube channel, Chopra said that Ganguly and Buchanan’s differences of opinion led to them being dropped as captain and coach at the Kolkata Knight Riders.
Chopra was at KKR in the first season of the IPL in 2008, when Ganguly was the captain of the team and Buchanan was the coach.
“In the first year of IPL, there was John Buchanan as coach and his fellow Australian Ricky Ponting was also there. Sourav Ganguly was the captain. I have seen this from close quarters – their relationship was alright to begin with, but it worsened with time,” said Chopra in his video.
“Buchanan’s way of working was different, and Sourav had a different temperament. In the end, he also wanted to remove Ganguly from captaincy, which actually happened the following season [New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum was named captain in 2009], because in the first season, the team came sixth, and then they came eighth when Sourav was not the captain.”
In a 2018 interview with The Hindu, Buchanan had reflected on the issues between him and Ganguly.
“I certainly believe that Sourav had a role to play in the Knight Riders, but I just did not feel that in terms of the T20 format and how Sourav was playing. This again has something to do with physical, technical and mental aspects of the game,” said Buchanan.
The 2009 season was a disaster for KKR. They finished last on the points table and Buchanan, who was the head coach of the Australian team that won the World Cup in 2003, was sacked, with Ganguly returning as captain.
“Eventually, Buchanan had to leave,” said Chopra. “Some of the things, because I was privy to that, were overstated, like they talked about making three captains, which was not the case. But, that’s what happens. If one thing is wrong, it becomes a domino effect, other things also go wrong, and it’s said that nothing was good during his leadership.
“But then, man-management… one thing that I had against him [Buchanan] was that he gathered all his friends and associates there, the whole family had come in. There were a lot of his people, and that did not go down very well. On the one hand, you carefully pick and choose players and on the other hand, the whole family’s travelling with you as support staff. It left a little sour taste. The entire episode stands out like a sore thumb in KKR’s history.”