Row should have remained confidential - Wright

John Wright, the former Indian coach, has said that the row between Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly should have remained confidential and never have left the dressing-room.

Wright said that the issue would have been handled differently had he been coach. "I was very fortunate from the point of view that we always believed what goes on in the changing-room stays in the changing-room," he was quoted as saying by AFP. "Sometimes as soon as things come into the public area they can take on a momentum all of their own."

In his controversial email to the BCCI, Chappell had accused Wright of allowing Ganguly to practice "deceit", "rumour-mongering" and "divide and rule". "John Wright obviously allowed this [Ganguly's behaviour] to go on to the detriment of the team," wrote Chappell. "I am not prepared to sit back and allow this to continue."

Wright refused to take sides in the ongoing fracas but defended his approach during his five-year stint as the Indian coach. He said that his success at team building was one of Chappell's alleged weaknesses. "I stand by my record," said Wright. "I worked with the team I was given by the selectors. I worked as hard as I could with the whole team to try and get the performances that the Indian people wanted.

"Greg [Chappell] 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. It looks like they're having some teething problems at the moment and it will be interesting to see how it goes," Wright was quoted as saying by, the Melbourne-based, The Age. "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. It was almost like performance coaching and I hope we made some progress over the four years I was there."

"I had criticism from all quarters during, after and before my tenure, it's part of the role of being coach," said Wright. "The only thing that I tried to do was ensure that we played well as a team and we got results as a team, that was it. I've moved on, I'm no longer the coach, I believe we made progress during my time with the team, I thoroughly enjoyed it."

Wright added that he hoped that Chappell would succeed in his mission to take India to the next level. "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. He'll obviously do it in his own style and that may be different from the methods I used. It's a process. I've always tried to be very honest with the players. At times the players don't appreciate that."