Pawar will decide action against Chappell: Niranjan Shah

Nagpur, Mar 2 (UNI) Team India coach Greg Chappell may find himself being reprimanded by the BCCI for his comments about former captain Sourav Ganguly in an interview to a British newspaper.

Board of Control for Cricket in India secretary Niranjan Shah told UNI over phone from Rajkot that he has intimated Board president Sharad Pawar about the whole issue and the latter will decide on what action, if any, was to be taken against Chappell.

Mr Shah said since Mr Pawar is busy today, a decision on the issue would be taken only tomorrow.

In an interview to The Guardian, Chappell had stated that he did ask Ganguly to step down from captaincy in a way to help him revive his career, without knowing ''how utterly important to his (Ganguly's) life and finances being captain was''.

''Much has been written and said, a lot of it misleading, but in essence I told Sourav that if he wanted to save his career he should consider giving up the captaincy. He was just hanging in there. Modest innings were draining him. He had no energy to give to the team, which was helping neither him nor us,'' Chappell was quoted as saying in the interview.

''It was in his own interest to give himself mind space to work on his batting so that it could be resurrected but he was not prepared to do that,'' he had stated, while, at the same time, acknowledging that he owed for his current job to Ganguly.

''What I didn't realise at that stage was how utterly important to his life and finances being captain was,'' the Aussie told the British newspaper.

UNI GS MAZ PDS RN1408