KOLKATA, SEPTEMBER 27 Having appointed Greg Chappell after a high-profile selection process, and then seen a meltdown in his relationship with the captain, the BCCI is now trying to ensure the coach fits into the ‘‘Indian’’ scheme of things.

In the run-up to the to Tuesday’s review meeting in Mumbai, Chappell had received some subtle signals on how to blend into Indian culture. Those efforts, by Board officials, were meant to Indianise Chappell’s methods — read: less work and more passion — in light of some player discontent with his methods.

At one level, it simply looks like the Board is forgetting the reasons why it hired Chappell in the first place: to toughen and instill discipline in a team running amok in John Wright’s last days.

Yet they now seem to object to his modus operandi.

The players’ complaints are almost laughable, but for the high stakes — and big money — involved:

• Chappell’s fitness regime is far tougher than that under Wright and Andrew Leipus

• The Aussie is fussy about decorum, dress code and behaviour in public

• Punctuality is another major area of difference, with the captain being a serial offender

• Chappell ‘‘criticises us in public’’, as one junior player put it

‘‘You cannot discipline senior players like Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag by issuing a 10pm curfew time’’, a senior board official told The Indian Express today. ‘‘You use diplomacy.’’

Chappell doesn’t do subtlety but the Board feels it’s best in his long-term interests. The problem is not Ganguly alone, the source pointed out; other players had also confronted Wright in his endgame.

To this end, BCCI officials see a silver lining in the cloud that has currently enveloped the game and the team. It will, they say, give Chappell a chance to see first-hand just what cricket in India is all about, and how trivialities can blow up into huge issues.

Yet this effort by Board officials, and their explanation of it, unwittingly exposes the root cause of cricket’s problems in India. ‘‘In India, the game is driven by passion and performance’’, the official said. ‘‘As long as the players deliver, there’s no cause for worry off the field. This is exactly what Chappell hasn’t yet understood.’’

What the Board hasn’t understood, it seems, is that there isn’t much performance at the moment, and the passion is all in the wrong direction.

(With K. Shriniwas Rao in Mumbai)

THE GREY AREAS IN BLACK AND WHITE  

•‘The two assured the committee that they will work together in the interests of the game’ • What, then, have they been doing all along? And if either one hasn’t, shouldn’t they be removed? •‘The criterion relating to performance applies to coach, captain as well as the players’ • Isn’t the coach’s contract till the 2007 World Cup? So how can his performance be reviewed before that? And does this ad-hoc committee review his performance? •‘We feel there was some miscommunication (regarding the issue of Sourav faking injury) and whatever was stated is far from truth.’ • Does this mean Chappell was not telling the truth? Though Mahendra later clarified that there weren’t any specialized centers for scans, etc, in Mutare (where the “injury” took place), that definitely wasn’t the initial observation. •‘The leak of the controversial e-mail, will be investigated’ n Said with a smile, almost a wink, this doesn’t need comment •‘The captain has to control the game and coach has to do his job’ • That is as open-ended a statement as you can get, a typically vague BCCI clarification. What exactly is the coach’s ‘‘job’’?