Sourav Ganguly : An Enigma

1. 

I am guessing it has been two long years since Sourav decided to hang his boots up and shut everyone who thought his place was not guaranteed. But he lives on. In conversations & cricket at large.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni & Sourav Ganguly have an enviable record as captain and when the former sent Cheteshwar Pujara ahead of the struggling Rahul Dravid in a crucial fourth innings chase, I was reminded of the VVS Laxman move of 2001. Nothing else came to mind as I was happy as ever in the crowd privileged enough to see how Cheteshwar along with Vijay first & Sachin later would weave the Indian innings to a famous win at the Chinaswamy.

Such is the enigma of Sourav. He must have been proud of Dhoni’s move in his mind because Sourav has seen Pujara from close quarters at the KKR camp and knows that not many can play test cricket like Pujara does. It is moves like these that define captaincy.

Sourav Ganguly was a born leader many can say because he always chose his path and never listened to his adversaries. Some said the short ball would do the trick. It did many a times but couldn’t stop him from scoring 10,000 ODI runs and taking his team to a celebrated WC final in 2003. He always knew what he is capable of and never flinched when he was down. His obituary was written probably as many times he has scored a hundred for India but not once did those obituaries come true much like Steve Jobs.

When Sourav first came on to the scene in 1996(not 1992 for the ODI’s in Australia) to play a Test for India, he scored a memorable hundred at Lord’s and since then became a favourite for many as a hundred on debut means fans will come aplenty. He followed it up with another hundred in the next test with Sachin Tendulkar. He was an unknown quantity but Calcutta newspapers wrote with pride. It was a big moment in Bengal cricket since they last won the Ranji trophy in 1990. I remember playing at Vivekananda Park for my school taking 3 wickets in a match when my coach came and told me that Sourav Ganguly was here yesterday on the same pitch and had scored a hundred. There is no relation to the greatness of Sourav in this except that as a 13 year old it was bliss. It was like a Shardashram Vidyalaya student would say he was from the same school as Sachin. That kind of joy. It cannot be explained.

Within 2 years, Sourav had cemented his place in the ODI and Test sides. He was opening the batting with Tendulkar and both amassed runs at a fast pace. Tendulkar was already a great. Sourav was on the anvil. He used to come down the track to spinners with ease and caress quickies on the offside with finesse that is unmatched till date. Lara was ferocious, Gilchirist would be called murderous but Sourav was sublime. Pure Poetry and used his poetic licence to script many an Indian win.

He would go on to win 4 MOM’s in the Sahara Cup we watched as children waking up to Canadian timezones and calling the Cable Guy to put Star Sports on channel no. 26 and remove that WWF(now WWE). He would score runs in seaming conditions and take wickets

When you sit down and look at Sourav’s hundreds, his most important one came against a fiery Australian attack at Brisbane when the team was down. He played shots on a juicy wicket when the chips were down and scored 144. It was important in the context of the game and the series. Again that century is not remembered as much as Sachin's 241, the one without a cover drive. Actually Sachin's 241 came in a draw, but the most important contribution was Rahul Dravid's at Adelaide where he scored 233 and 72*. Sourav's century many writers confess set the tone for the season.

Sourav was a resolute captain with foresight and attitude that was needed for the job. Just that he took the job when sachin washed his hands off it and India was recuperating a match fixing scandal. He was handling a bunch of young cricketers who needed only some support. Gavaskar is known to have destroyed the legendary Dilip Doshi’s career but Ganguly would take these youngsters from camps and give them enough chances that they would feel the Indian side was their very own. At that point in time had Sourav left them in the wilderness and continued to play oldies we would never have seen the same fearlessness like we did in Kapil’s Devils of 1983. Somewhere in 1990’s that fearlessness was gone and lethargy was creeping in. Talents were not handled as they should have been. We lost Kambli to bling, Pravin Amre somewhere and lost the talents of SS Das, Sadagopan Ramesh & wicketkeepers of whom I have lost count. Sourav changed all that or most of it atleast. He ensured Parthiv Patel, Irfan Pathan, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammed Kaif and the likes got drafted into the Indian squad with ease giving them ample chances such that they start producing gems that would be part of folklore.

Harbhajan Singh had lost his father and was the only breadearner with many sisters and chose cricket would be his field. Amidst all the chucking charges on him, he made a grand entry with a hat trick in the famous Calcutta test match of 2001. Yuvraj scored 50’s at no.6 and moved up the order later in his career, a first for India since Kapil and Manjrekar were gone. Mohammed Kaif was India’s best fielder after Azhar and there is no denying in that. Irfan Pathan is a story that I could cry on because the way I used to idolise him, only Pakistani kids used to idolise the great Wasim Akram. I will write on him in detail some other time.

All these names are now household figures when they could have been forgotten much like Uday Chopra’s movies. Only that wouldn’t get chances like Uday to re launched because Indian cricket is a nasty business.

Sourav was a man of emotions and never spared the opposition. See the video below where he tells Mohammed Yousuf to get up fast as his overs would be cut if he continued to nurse the injury. He chose the Mecca of Cricket to open his shirt, wave it from the Lord’s balcony and celebrate India’s greatest ODI win since the WC in 1983 incidentally coming at the same ground. That time by the way, the wily Srikanth was smoking away to glory on the same balcony where Ganguly did a Salman Khan.

Each day I get ridiculed by friends for liking Sourav Ganguly so much and they only keep talking about the short ball stuff. It’s like Sachin fans telling whenever he chokes that he’s done enough. But I know i win the arguement when I base my theory on facts and figues which do not come handy to the Indian fan blinded by Tendulkarness and mass euphoria. Sourav Ganguly is a whirlwind romance only that it lasts longer and becomes stronger when you hear his stories.

When he was dropped from the team everyone wrote his name off. His contemporary Waqar would never find a way back in the Pakistan side but Sourav went back to first class cricket and score century over century for Bengal. He would turn up for Kalighat CC in the first division and score there too. When India were all out for 188 against the visiting Proteas for a brief moment they showed the score of Bengal playing Services(I think) and crowd went ballistic forgetting that the team they had come to see was bundled. Sourav had scored 159. I was quietly smiling as thanks to Cricinfo I had followed that through the day. He returned to the Indian side and scored a gutsy 83 after coming in at 37/4. He was the second highest scored in that series behind VVS and was never dropped again. It was and remains, the Greatest Comeback in Test Match cricket.

He scored a famous double hundred at Bangalore against the Pakistanis, his one day record was clean and he added more runs to it than his retactors wanted & also kept on smiling incessantly. His one day return was momentous with fifties in as many as 3 matches out of five if a remember correctly and a 98 in Nagpur. He even ocassionally came down the track much like his old self and made fun of the commentators in the process. Fans like me were happy while others seemed amazed.

With the start of IPL, he was the controversy child with John Buchanan. Accused immensely with regards to his athleticism, he only let his bat do the talking. In IPL III when he was blamed of not scoring runs at a quick pace and talks from a journalist at a Press Conference that he should come down the order, he picked up the mic and said, " from now on, McCullum and I will open in every innings." Get another 37 year old to say that. You wont find one now as Wilfred Rhodes is long gone along with Grace, Rajitsinghji and Duleepsinghji. Sourav scored a quickfire 88 of 54 balls in the game against Deccan Chargers that followed and hit India's best left arm spinner Pragyan Ojha for four sixes at the Cathedral of Indian Cricket - The Eden Gardens.

To be honest, like Peter Roebuck says even a fan has a number of battles to play. As a Sourav fan, I have won enough.

You might see greatness in Tendulkar, class in Laxman, grit in Dravid but for guts you have to have a look at Sourav. From letting Steve Waugh wait for the tosses to telling selectors that Yuvraj has to play to coming on national television in a soft drink ad and telling people to support a team he was dropped from. There is only one name. Sourav Chandidas Ganguly from Behala, Calcutta.

This is my ode to an Ordinary cricketer, Extraordinary Captain & The Man who made a Test Match comeback from his grave.