Upset Ganguly writes to Pawar

Besides making a verbal complaint to the Board of Control for Cricket in India, former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly has also written to BCCI chief Sharad Pawar, taking strong exception to coach Greg Chappell's disparaging remarks on him.

Ganguly sent the missive immediately after coming to know about Chappell's controversial interview to British newspaper 'The Guardian' in which the Aussie had said that the left-handed batsman wanted to cling on to captaincy for financial reasons.

Peeved at Chappell's comments, Ganguly has sought the intervention of the Board on the matter.

In the letter, a copy of which was marked to BCCI Secretary Niranjan Shah, Ganguly made it clear that he was deeply annoyed and disturbed over Chappell's remarks in the interview.

He also called up Shah and spoke to him on the issue.

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Confirming receipt of the letter, Shah told PTI, "We have already acted on it and issued a warning to Chappell." In an e-mail to the coach, the Board has asked Chappell not to make "unwarranted" remarks in the media about Ganguly and instead confine his comments to "performance of the team".

In the interview, Chappell had said that he advised Ganguly to step down as captain (during the tour of Zimbabwe last September) 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."

The former Australian captain also said, "what I didn't realise at that stage was how utterly important to his life and finances being captain was."