Favourite Ganguly moments

'Beginning of new India' - Kapil

November 10, 2008

	Time spent in the domestic circuit reflected in Sourav Ganguly's Test debut at Lord's © Getty Images

Kapil Dev, former India coach

That evening in 2002, standing on the Lord's balcony, when Sourav took off his shirt and waved to start wild celebrations was a remarkable moment. I can never forget it. For the people of older generation like me it was a tremendous occasion. It marked the beginning of a new India. What was really surprising was here was a team's captain, and not just any player, who had decided to bare his emotions in such a public fashion and that, too, at such an historic venue. It was just unbelievable and fantastic.

Javagal Srinath, fomer India team-mate

The Sourav Ganguly people saw in 1991 and the one who came back in 1996 were completely different and people's perception about him changed in his second coming. Nothing surprised more than that. He had transformed in his game, but, importantly he was on top of his game during those four to five years on the domestic circuit. It's always good to spend time in domestic cricket to gain experience in those early years, but he performed consistently and that showed in his century at Lord's on his Test debut.

Saba Karim, former Bengal and India team-mate

I was Sourav's captain during the beginning of his domestic career and also played under him. Before his Test debut in 1996 he was a player, who, at times, could be nervous, someone who was not sure of his own ability. But once he started to play for India regularly he found that belief easily. After a good performance in an ODI series in Pakistan [Wills Trophy] he turned up to lead Bengal in a Ranji game against Orissa on a what was a sub-standard pitch. Though he failed in the ODI and and later in the first innings of the four-day game, he came out stronger when it was the most crucial. We were set small target in a low-scoring game and Ganguly decided to push himself up to the No. 3 from his usual No. 5. He made only 30, the second highest in the innings, but the way he took the responsibility on himself calmed the nerves of his team-mates. That day I felt his transformation from a domestic to international cricketer was complete. It showed me how he had held his own to stay put and had learned quickly from playing for the country.

Andy Flower, former Zimbabwe captain

When he used to play a left-arm spinner, not one particular, I was always amazed at his power of hitting over the boundary especially since the ball was coming into him. That to me was my favourite Sourav Ganguly moment.

Deep Dasgupta, fomer Bengal team-mate

When he was dropped from the Irani Cup he was obviously upset as he had been looking forward to play the Australian series. Even before his omission he had been working really hard. Despite the disappointment and his stature he didn't give up. Next day, he was back to his usual training. That spoke a lot about his dedication, his passion. He just set an example for everyone. That spoke a lot about his personality and his character.

The prince with the common touch

The prince with the common touch

Ganguly's enduring legacy will be that of a leader who took Indian cricket out of its feudal past

When he was golden: Ganguly gets his hundred at Brisbane in 2004 © Getty Images

In the end, the timing of the retirement was as impeccable as the strokes through cover with which he captivated the game's aficionados in his heyday. Sourav Ganguly's career will be defined by the games he played, and didn't play, against Australia, and he will relish the chance to be part of an Indian side that has the opportunity to equal the feats of the team he led so famously seven years ago. As last stands go, this could be a memorable one.

Assuming he plays all four matches, Ganguly will finish with 113 Test caps. After his maiden tour with the Indian team - to Australia in 1991-92 - ended with an unfavourable report from a manager who would subsequently go on to be the BCCI president, even one cap must have seemed a distant dream. When we look back at the furore that accompanied his selection for the tour of England in 1996, it says more about the mindset of the time than it does about Ganguly the cricketer.

All the insinuations and scathing articles were indicative of a rotten system that could rarely see beyond the cricketing hotbeds of Mumbai, Delhi and Karnataka. If you were from Bengal or Tamil Nadu, or an even lesser state, the chances were that you weren't even a blip on the radar. In many ways Ganguly's second coming and century on debut at Lord's were to herald a shift away from parochialism, a sea change that was completed during his years as captain. These days, if no one bats an eyelid when a boy from Rae Bareilly or another from Kochi dons the India cap, much of the credit must go to the Bengali who became a pan-Indian hero.

Ganguly was no great tactician in the Ian Chappell or Mike Brearley mould, but like Sir Frank Worrell he was able to create a coherent symphony from discordant notes. Much like the West Indies of the 1950s, the Indian team that Ganguly inherited contained many talented individuals with no real sense of collective purpose. With him leading, they came together under the Indian standard, and ushered in what must surely rank as the golden age of Indian cricket.

Though his name will forever be associated with the stopping of Steve Waugh's juggernaut in 2001 and the run to the World Cup final two years later, my favourite Ganguly memory will always be that glorious 144 at the Gabba in 2003.

The days leading up to the Test had been full of innuendo about chin music and Ganguly being the weak link in the line-up. "That's typical of how Australia play their cricket; they play it tough and use their media," he said with fleeting smile on the eve of the game. "Even Steve Waugh gets short-pitched deliveries, and he has got 32 hundreds."

When probed further about the short-ball barrage that he could expect, Ganguly smiled again and said: "When you play cricket, you don't expect everything pitched up to you. We who have played Test cricket for a longer period of time have received short deliveries. I do not think about it. Fortunately or unfortunately, they don't leave the newspaper under the door in my hotel."

	Much like the West Indies of the 1950s, the Indian team that Ganguly inherited contained many talented individuals with no real sense of collective purpose. With him leading, they came together under the Indian standard, and ushered in what must surely rank as the golden age of Indian cricket

When he came out to bat in a game severely disrupted by rain, India were reeling at 62 for 3. By the time he departed, having earned grudging respect even from the Fanatics who had seen Andy Bichel, the local hero, taken to the laundromat, India had a healthy lead. Waugh and all of Australia knew that Ganguly was in no mood to blink first.

That innings, full of glorious cuts and languid drives, was emblematic of Ganguly the batsman, who always got a raw deal because his numbers didn't quite stack up next to the other three in a famous middle order. Given how much the captaincy diminished the batting returns of more lauded batsmen like Michael Vaughan and Rahul Dravid, it's only fair to wonder how good a player Ganguly might have been without captaincy's ball and chain.

The figures are revealing. In the 49 Tests in which he led India, he averaged 37.66, well below what you would expect from a batsman of his quality. In 60 other games, he scored at 44.60. That he has made more runs than any other Indian batsman since his return to the Test fold in 2006 merely makes you think of what might have been.

The Ganguly tale has its most turbulent moments in the days when Greg Chappell was India's coach. When he choose Chappell, going against his team-mates' preference for Tom Moody, Ganguly couldn't have imagined the impact it would have on his career. There were mistakes on both sides and it seems churlish to apportion blame, and the most appropriate way to remember the whole sordid episode is as an example of cultural disconnect.

The last year of Ganguly's captaincy saw a marked decline in his batsmanship and raised questions about his ability to galvanise the side, especially in the wake of a withdrawal from the Nagpur Test that stunned even his confidantes in the dressing room. When the captaincy was wrested from him, both his attitude and appetite for the game were questioned. But like Geoffrey Boycott in the days before a triumphant return from self-imposed exile in the 1970s, Ganguly spent the months on the periphery fiercely determined to challenge accepted stereotypes.

When he did return, with a cursory handshake from Chappell at a tour game in Potchefstroom, the sense of purpose was palpable. His doughty half-century helped inspire a famous victory at the Wanderers, and even as India squandered a series-winning chance in Cape Town, he was the only one to bat without fear and hesitancy perched on his shoulders. Reduced to a foot soldier, the former general had rediscovered his appetite for the battlefield.

He batted with elegance and poise in England a few months later, and was magnificent in the home series against Pakistan and South Africa. There were no Brisbane-like heroics in Australia last time round, however.

Little did Ganguly foresee when he put his weight behind Chappell's candidacy for the coach's job, the bitterness that lay ahead © AFP

Given his domination of spin bowlers over the years, the failure in Sri Lanka was surprising, especially given that he was the one specialist batsman not to be dismissed by Ajantha Mendis. That he was repeatedly dismissed by Muttiah Muralitharan, who he had tamed so memorably on his home patch at Kandy in 2001, suggested that both the eyes and reflexes were slowing down. With the curtain having been wrenched down on his one-day career in Australia earlier this year, you wondered if the reservoir of desire had begun to run dry.

After more than a decade at the top Ganguly has nothing to prove. He's come a long way, this favourite son of Kolkata, the "God of the off side" who went on to become India's most successful captain. During the journey he established himself as one of the greats of the one-day game, the exorcist of India's overseas hoodoo and a maverick who upset Waugh and also the old suits at Lord's with those shirtless antics on the red-brick balcony.

It's somehow fitting that the last words will possibly be written in Nagpur, the venue that came to symbolise the Rubicon of his days as a leader. Four years on, he's part of a group that could reclaim modern-day Test cricket's ultimate prize, the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Whether he achieves that or not, the legacy is secure.

Many may have described him as a prince, wrongly as a snooty one, but first and foremost he was the leader with the common touch and the man responsible for dragging Indian cricket out of its feudal past. MS Dhoni and many others who subsequently emerged from what Arvind Adiga, the Booker Prize nominee, described as The Darkness, have a lot to thank him for.

The many sides of Sourav

The many sides of Sourav

Sometimes a rebel, often a creative force, always in the thick of it, Ganguly has been a many-layered character, and his career an astonishing one

Sourav Ganguly seemed on the surface to not take things too seriously, but the fires of competition burned hot in him © AFP

Gangles was fun. Every now and then a fellow feels like tearing off his shirt and waving it around like Mick Jagger with a microphone. Of all places, Sourav Ganguly responded to the urge at Lord's, holiest of cricketing holies. So much for decorum. He might as well have burped in St Paul's. Every now and then a fellow feels an insult coming on. Ganguly was rude to Steve Waugh, captain of all Australia, the mightiest foe of them all. So much for deference. Typically it started as a misjudgment and became an amusement that turned into a strategy.

Ganguly did not mind directing the fire at himself. What could they do? Bowl bumpers? Already every fast bowler worth his salt had tried to knock off his head. He had no lordly lineage but he walked and talked as he pleased, not exactly trying to provoke opponents but unwilling to deny himself. He did not give much ground to the modern game, with its fitness and diving and running between wickets and morning training and all that rot. It was brave of him to remain apart, for it left him exposed to ridicule, forced him to justify himself. But Ganguly was not scared of the pressure. Perhaps he needed the extra pressure the way a veteran car needs a crank. And, just in case, he had the populist touch. If Anil Kumble was the colossus, Sachin Tendulkar the champion, Rahul Dravid the craftsman, VVS Laxman the sorcerer, then Ganguly was the inspiration.

It has been an astonishing career. Some men prefer to follow a predictable path and their stories tell of a slow rise to the top and an equally measured decline. To that end instinct is subdued, contention avoided and risk reduced. That has been altogether too dull for Ganguly. Throughout he has toyed with his fate, tempting it to turn its back on him so that once again he could surprise the world with a stunning restoration. Something in him rebelled against the mundane and the sensible. He needed his life to be full of disasters and rescues, and comebacks and mistakes and memorable moments. To hell with the prosaic. At heart he is a cavalier, albeit of mischievous persuasion.

Taken as a whole, his contribution has been a triumph. It is no small thing for a boy from Kolkata to make it in Indian cricket. Till then local players were regarded as soft touches, and Ganguly himself was so categorised in his early days. Whereas the Mumbai-ites had risen through a rigorous system and the outstation boys had fought every inch of the way, the Bengalis seemed to lack the toughness required to make the grade. Ganguly changed all that. Indeed it was one of the many tasks he set himself. Always he has pitted himself against presumption and always he has prevailed.

Heavens, he even managed to time his departure as sweetly as ever he did any cover-drive. Before the series began he disarmingly announced that these four Tests against Australia were going to be his last. At a stroke his announcement put an end to speculation that he might lose his place. Ganguly is shrewder than he pretends. Just for a day or so it seemed that he might not get his way as reports spread of indiscreet remarks supposedly made about Robin Uthappa's hair, but Ganguly disowned the comments, even the splendid one about "every Tom, Dick and Harry" playing in the team. And so, once again, he lived to fight another day. Mind you, he let them hang in the air for 72 hours! That was typical Ganguly: at once the hero and the villain.

	Throughout he has toyed with his fate, tempting it to turn its back on him so that once again he could surprise the world with a stunning restoration. Something in him rebelled against the mundane and the sensible. He needed his life to be full of disasters and rescues

To some extent his manner has distracted attention from his cricket. Above all he has been a fine player whose career tells of determination and perseverance. As a batsman he played numerous influential innings. Often he was at his best on the game's greatest stages (including Lord's, where he first made his mark) or when the chips were down. Then he could concentrate. In less stressful times his batting could be flashy, with shots vaguely executed and the outcome left to the gods. Ganguly was not a collector of runs but a match player. Such men cannot be judged only in terms of tallies.

As captain he was an uplifting figure prepared to stand up for his players. It is easily forgotten that his captaincy started with Indian cricket at its lowest ebb. Hereabouts India was extremely lucky to have at its disposal a superb group of senior players untouched by those dire events, and a new captain free from the insecurity and greed that had undone his predecessor. Accepting money from grubby sources was, one sensed, beneath Ganguly. He just did not move in those circles or think along those lines.

Not that Ganguly alone deserves all the credit for India's swift recovery. Around him could be found a resolute and principled bunch of cricketers. They needed someone to blow the bugle and Ganguly obliged. That is leadership. Alone among the cricketing nations, his Indian side repeatedly troubled the Australians. Under his leadership the team prevailed in England, daring to bat first on a Headingley greentop. Indeed the very image of Indian cricket changed - a process started by Sunil Gavaskar and completed by Ganguly and companions. No longer does anyone talk about timidity against fast bowling or languishing overseas. Driven in varying degrees by pride and professionalism, the now-departing generation acknowledged these weaknesses, confronted them and corrected them.

Always Ganguly was in the thick of it. No matter how often he was discarded he bounced back. No matter how frequently his cricketing obituary was written he found a way back into the team. At times he seemed to relish the headlines forecasting his imminent and final downfall. He is not by nature defiant. It is too petty an emotion. Just that he liked to prove doubters wrong. Criticism spurred him on. Otherwise he was inclined to become lethargic. He revelled in his reputation as an independent man who lived and played by his own lights.

He is not a man easily pinned down. Although it is never wise to suppose a man can be caught in a single adjective, it is much easier with his contemporaries. To watch Rahul Dravid or Virender Sehwag or Anil Kumble play is to know a large part of them. Ganguly liked to keep people guessing. Perhaps it is his background. Is it possible that the son of a wealthy businessman might have had some reservations, even embarrassment, about becoming a professional cricketer? Deep down Ganguly belonged to the old days, not so much of aristocracy as of ease. He cast himself as a sportsman, a player of games, and on the surface did not take it too seriously. And yet the fires of competition burned hot.

In some respects he has been a rebel, against the expectations of his origins, against dutiful modern ways, against the patronising of his country. But he is too large a figure to be motivated by anything as shrivelling as anger. Rather he has been a creative force in the game. As a batsman he was full of neatly executed strokes. It was not in his nature to brutalise the ball. Nor was he a poet caressing it with a delicate touch. Neither extreme attracted him in the slightest. Instead he stroked the ball, guiding it between fieldsmen or lifting it over their heads. It looked effortless but some men like to hide the strain.

Ganguly was at his most effective against the Australians, and his Brisbane hundred in 2003 showed he wasn't as fragile as he seemed © AFP

He has an unusual and unconventional mind. Often he will make the remark that raises eyebrows, causes people to stop and think. After all the hullabaloo of the travesty in Sydney, his stepped back and said that it had shown "how desperately the Australians want to win". All India was in a rage and yet a part of him respected that unbridled determination to prevail. He saw the meaning of the whole thing. Indeed he must have taken satisfaction from it. Australia has worked themselves into a lather over beating India. The rivalry had been largely his creation. And India had stood its ground. He had played his part in that as well.

Ganguly was at his most effective against the Australians. Somehow he sensed that the two nations had a lot in common, though they knew it not. But he felt that his players were unduly intimidated by the reputations and muscularity of these opponents. Accordingly he set out to convince them that the Aussies were human and could be beaten. In India he turned up late for the toss, a cheekiness that began as an accident and became an amusing tactic. It worked. The Australians became riled and started to play the man and not the ball. They had fallen into Ganguly's trap. His players could see that he was neither scared nor scarred, and enjoyed plucking the giant's beard. As captain Ganguly understood the value of gestures, the importance of appearances.

By no means, though, was it all gestures. Ganguly was the real thing, or else he could not have carried his players along with him. In Australia in 2003-04 he knew that his struggling team needed him to lead the way in the critical hour with a captain's innings and in Brisbane he promptly produced a rousing, valorous hundred on a lively pitch against a rampant attack. It was this performance that confirmed, once and for all, that Ganguly was not as fragile as he seemed. A twig can be snapped but not even a tempest can uproot a tree. It also secured the respect of his initially reluctant opponents, who know a fighter when they see one. As far as the Aussies were concerned, Lord Snooty had earned his stripes. It is one thing to talk, quite another to follow up with deeds.

And now he leaves the scene. Although he has batted with silky serenity in this series, it is the right time to go. A man has only so many struggles in him. A player's supporters have only so many battles in them. Perhaps in the last few days of his career he will play his part in India's greatest cricketing feat, the downing of Australia not by miraculous deed but sustained ruthlessness. If so it will be no more than he deserves. Ganguly has been neither a genius or a saint or a great batsman, but he has served with distinction and leaves Indian cricket in a much better state than he found it.