A day after India's historic Test win on South African soil, the coach drops guard and talks about his new-found admiration for the former Indian skipper.

There's something in the air, and it feels good. For those associated with Indian cricket in any capacity, be it administrator, player, pundit, scribe or aficionado, the last few months have been, simply put, dismal.

But this team, which has had its last rites read on several occasions, knows how to come back from the dead like nobody else does.

And so it was in the Wanderers, that a tour came alive after the tourists had been buried 4-0 in the one-day series.

The aftermath of that resurrection is sweetly scented with exhilaration, satisfaction and even reconciliation. With the Test series at that time a foregone conclusion, no one giving India a whiff of a chance, the Sourav Ganguly-Greg Chappell reunion was always going to be the big talking point.

God knows what would have happened had Ganguly, and India , proved the skeptics right and failed here, but success breeds positive energy. Two days after the former Indian skipper told the media that he had been treated outstandingly by the team as well as given support by the coach, a content, relaxed Chappell spoke about how he feels "comfortable with Sourav" and should he continue playing this vein, a long career awaits him in the game.

Excerpts from an informal media interaction with a happy coach:
His relationship with Sourav is comfortable: Everyone's relationship with him is fine. Sourav made some comments in the team meeting the other day, about how the last ten months has been a great learning experience.

To be fair, he probably needed time away to reassess his own cricket, and also no longer being captain - Rahul also had time to take over that role. The thing that so few people want to understand is that, from my point of view, there was nothing personal. The discipline that a good team requires is that everyone needs to be on the same page and working in the same direction. Zaheer Khan went through a similar thing and he's come back. We (Zaheer and Chappell) had a discussion yesterday after the game, and he believes that he had to go through that to come back to where he is now.

Sourav's in the same boat. He's got a lot to offer. And we saw some of it in this Test match. Hopefully, from this point, we can go forward without this cloud hanging over the head that there are personalities involved. It's not about Greg Chappell or Sourav Ganguly; it's about Indian cricket. And it's about what a successful team needs to do. And if he does the things we saw from him in this game, he can have a long stint. Most of us have been cautious about what we say, for fear of it being distorted.

The meeting was always going to be interesting: It was definitely a volatile situation, there's no doubt about it. Because of all the emotion surrounding the whole thing, it was always going to be an interesting period. I would like to think that both of us would be professional enough for this to go through reasonably smoothly. Internally, it's been very smooth. He can only speak on his behalf. I'm very comfortable.

It was never going to be easy for Sourav but he had support: The players have been most welcoming and supportive and it's been a difficult time for everyone I suppose. It was never going to be easy for Sourav but I think he had some good support from the playing group, senior and juniors. He is a world recognised and well-credentialled Indian player and that, hopefully, has helped make the transition very smooth for him.

He always had a lot to offer: When we talked way back in Zimbabwe, I thought he had a lot to offer as a batsman. The difficulty was that, from the captaincy point of view, he was at a stage that was taking up a lot of the mental space he needed for the batting. He made a comment at the team meeting the other day that he'd learnt a lot and that there's more to life than cricket. And then, he made a comment that had something to do with gutsy, courageous play (being important in the Test series).

I think it was Sachin who asked him what he meant by courageous, gusty play and he talked about how, in these past 10 months or so, he's been able to reassess a lot of things and cricket's not the most important and only thing in life and this realisation has taken the pressure off him from a batting point of view.

He's realised that every inning is not the most important thing in life and it's given him the chance to be a little more relaxed about his approach to batting.

There's freedom in Sourav's batting now: If you bat as if every inning's your last, you're not going to bat with freedom. And I think we saw some freedom from Sourav in this innings, in this game, that perhaps he's not had in his batting for a long time. These were some of the things we talked about.

Ten months to now, he's mentally different: Mentally, he's a different batsman, there's no doubt about this. He's always been a strong character. I mean, we've seen from him in the time he's been out of the team that he's got a will and a desire to play for India that is very strong. It showed through in Potchefstroom and it showed through in this Test match