Unsportsmanlike Conduct

In cricket-obsessed India, where the travails of the country's national team are front-page news, a feud between its coach, Australian Greg Chappell, and its captain, Sourav Ganguly, has become more captivating than any test match. During the team's tour to Zimbabwe last month, an outraged Ganguly told the Indian press that Chappell was demanding he resign as captain; Ganguly threatened to quit the team in protest. Days later, in an e-mail to India's cricket board which was leaked to the media, Chappell described the 32-year-old as "struggling," "fragile" and "nervous" and suggested he needed to step down as captain to focus on improving his game. The bust-up has riveted India, where, as the Bombay tabloid Mid Day noted, "the game is religion." The spat has played endlessly on local TV, while rival protesters have burned effigies of Chappell and Ganguly in the streets.

At its core, the controversy is a clash between the gentlemanly amateurism that has characterized the Indian side and the hard-nosed professionalism that Chappell, a former captain of Australia's national team, was brought in to instill in India's talented but often lackadaisical players. His arrival in July was taken as a signal that their days of lackluster performances—the Zimbabwe tour, the first of Chappell's tenure, was also the first away test series India won in two decades—were over. But Chappell's ambition hasn't sat well with some players: bowler Harbhajan Singh complained to reporters that the new coach was subjecting the team to "fear," "tension" and "immense pressure." The row peaked last week when Chappell and Ganguly were summoned by the Indian cricket board, which enjoined the two sides to rebuild their "professional working relationship"—despite widespread expectations that one or both would be shown the door. ("Look how we are cheated!" grumbled Mid Day over the anticlimax.) That day may yet come. "I only want some rest," Ganguly told reporters after the hearing—an attitude that's unlikely to please his hard-driving coach.