Lives in Cricket No 12 - Ric Charlesworth

Chappell in his coaching role with Indian cricket. 38 They were even more hostile months later, when a website reported that Ric had expressed serious doubts about whether India could host the hockey World Cup in 2010: My feeling is that for the Commonwealth Games [also in 2010], they would lock down all the streets, similar to what they did for the Olympics in Beijing. Ordinary people won’t be anywhere near the athletes or the competition. The problem for the hockey World Cup, however, is that they won’t be able to close down the streets. No doubt, there will be assurances given, but I find it very difficult to feel that things will be under control. Conditions throughout the sub-continent were a major concern, he continued: Pakistan is a rogue state, I understand, but there was the attack in Mumbai and, when I was in India, bombs were going off in Delhi, in Hyderabad ... From my experience there, I just don’t see how you can manage such a large population for big events. Aslam Khan, vice president of the Indian Olympic Association, saw this as ‘a perfect example of double standards’. ‘If we did not give him security then he would have been disappointed. And now he is complaining about the security given to him. It is ridiculous!’ 39 By then, in early 2009, Ric was willing to tell listeners to the ABC that his period in India had been ‘an amazing experience and for my wife and my family, my children, I’m sure they will remember it for the rest of their lives, the time that they spent there.’ He had gone there because ‘it was the great challenge: I wasn’t ever sure that it would work out, but I’m glad that I did in some ways. I cleansed my system of the wonder of “what if?”’ He said much the same thing, when asked by interviewer Attard for an example of the Shakespearean quotations that had gone into his latest book: ‘one of my favorites from the bard is that “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”’ By this time, however, he had doubts about conditions in India that went far beyond the personal problems he’d encountered. He 2002-2009 87 38 ‘Farewell Ric Charlesworth: We will never know what a top-class international coach could do with all the hockey talent in India’, 28 July 2008, www.acommonfan.com 39 ‘India not a safe venue: Ric Charlesworth’, 8 March 2009.