Former India coach John Wright slammed his successor, Greg Chappell for meddling in selection matters and getting embroiled in controversy with captain Sourav Ganguly and the administration so early in his tenure.
"Greg has only been in the job five months and at the moment it doesn't look like (he and Ganguly) would go on holiday together," said Wright, who served Indian cricket for almost five years, said on Wednesday.
Chappell had accused Wright of being soft in his handling of the team in the sensational e-mail to the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
"It looks like they're having some teething problems at the moment and it will be interesting to see how it goes," the former New Zealand skipper told The Age in Melbourne where he is coaching the Rest of the World XI for the Super Series against Australia.
"I always looked at it this way - the team was selected for me, whoever that was, with a captain, with a player. You didn't get a vote on selection but my job was to ensure that as coach they were prepared and performed to the best of their ability," he said, indirectly taking a swipe at Chappell's observation that Indian captain as well as some of the players did not deserve to be in the team.
"It was almost like performance coaching and I hope we made some progress over the four years I was there."
However, Wright said he hoped Chappell would succeed in taking the Indian team "a little bit further".
"In any team situation there are always issues -- sometimes personal, sometimes performance. You want Greg to come on and hopefully he'll take it that little bit further," the former New Zealand player said.
"He'll obviously do it in his own style and that may be different from the methods I used. It's a process," he said.
Wright was speaking after an uneasy truce was brokered between Chappell and Ganguly following an unsavoury slanging match.
The New Zealander also said that during his stint there were times when his opinion was not always appreciated by the players.
"I've always tried to be very honest with the players (and) at times the players don't appreciate that," said Wright, who helped India win series against Australia and Pakistan as also a final berth in the 2003 World Cup.
Wright said Indians were an extremely passionate lot when it came to cricket and that made coaching a challenging job.
"It's a challenging job, a very passionate environment and all sorts of issues can arise, sometimes from nowhere."
