Calling Calcutta

South Africa will alter the Cult status of the wilfully controversial former captain in a cricket-mad state starved of home-grown cricketing heroes.

Now that he's made his elegantly useful contribution to India's first Test win in South Africa for 17 years, Sourav Ganguly's fans are, at best, uncertainly jubilant. That's because they're never sure what he'll do next "" on the field and off it.

There are multiple, contradictory Sourav Gangulys the public knows.

One is the petulant prima donna who refuses to carry his kitbag, declines to take drinks on the field as twelfth man and skives off from training.

Another is the consummate politician. This is the one who selectively leaks information to the press, is pathologically clique-ish and willingly features in icky commercials announcing his intentions to play in the World Cup.

There's a third Ganguly, the inspirational leader, India's most successful captain, with a rare ability to motivate and jockey green young lads.

And, finally, there's Ganguly the cricketer. This is the sublime and classy left-handed bat who moved the pernickety Geoffrey Boycott to famously label him "The Prince of Calcoota".

Lord Snooty, Dada, Prince of Calcutta, Royal Bengal Tiger, God of the Offside, Maharaj...few sportsmen have acquired quite as many sobriquets "" and such contradictory ones "" as Ganguly.

The cricketing business is not renowned for compliant employees, but Ganguly appears to set new highs. No surprise, then, that his tribe of critics is almost as big as that of his fans. Or that any discussion on Ganguly invariably ends up as an argument.

What makes Ganguly such a wilfully controversial personality in a team with notably well-behaved stars like Tendulkar, Kumble and Dravid?

The answer partly lies in the milieu in which Ganguly cut his cricketing teeth. His state of Bengal has been conspicuous by its poor representation at the national level. Compared to, say, Maharashtra and Karnataka, the state's tally of national cricketers has been sparse.

This fact was always something of an embarrassment because the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) was, and is, the richest of the local cricketing institutions in India. Also, the state likes to boast of its knowledgeable fans.

The last Bengal cricketer of real note to play in the national side was in the fifties. This was Pankaj Roy, who held the world record for an opening partnership in a Test with Vinoo Mankad for many years. He also captained India for one Test in 1959. (Of course, there were others who put up worthy performances later "" Arun Lal and Dilip Doshi "" but they were not, as the Bengal xenophobes would have it, "native" to the state.)

In the rough and tumble of Calcutta's maidan cricket, Ganguly stood out for several reasons, not necessarily for his cricketing talent. His father was a senior administrator of CAB for many years.

An indulged younger son, he and his brother had a custom-made gym in their home. This when most maidan cricketers held nominal, low-paying jobs in public sector companies and could scarcely afford enough whites to last a season let alone visits to commercial gyms.

On Calcutta's tiny club grounds Ganguly could easily put away loose bowling for sixes and fours (this explains his appalling technique for running between the wickets). All the same, it was brother Snehashis who was considered the more talented.

Indeed, Ganguly's selection to the Indian team in 1992 against Australia was considered a mystery. He hadn't put up too many performances worth the name in that season. Was there a link, the gossips asked, between former Bengal batsman Ambar Roy's presence on the national selection board?

When Ganguly performed indifferently on that tour, his detractors gleefully insisted that there might have been some truth in the rumour.

Nevertheless, back home, this personable and articulate young man had suddenly acquired a fan following of surprising proportions. Why, even the "permanent" twelfth man of his local club side always fasted before Ganguly went in to bat.

Readmitted to the national squad after a decent domestic season in 1996, his exquisite century on debut at Lord's now swelled his Bengal fan following to mammoth proportions. In a cricket-mad state starved of home-grown cricketing heroes, Ganguly was like rain in a desert.

On his return from that debut, Ganguly had acquired cult status. He partnered Hema Malini in the annual Krishna Consciousness ratha yatra in Kolkata. Photos of the hero in his home started appearing in the local lifestyle magazines and his private life was minutely dissected.

Ganguly revelled in all this and added his own mild George Best-type touches by marrying the girl next door (a secret romance, we were told) and then appearing at a fertility temple with a B-grade movie starlet soon after.

Despite some lean patches and brushes with umpires and administrators "" not least of which was taking off his shirt, soccer-style, to celebrate a victory "" Ganguly acquired a permanent place in the team, consistently averaging above 40 in Tests for a while.

Appointed captain after the match-fixing scandals of the late nineties, he brought the team both stability and unprecedented success. His tally of 21 Test wins, 12 of them outside India and the memorable series win in both Tests and ODIs in Pakistan sealed his place in Indian cricketing history.

All this appeared to prove ample reason for fans in Bengal to forgive their adored son the trespasses of dismal performances in 2005 and take up the cudgels on his behalf against Chappel (himself no exemplar). No protest seemed extreme enough "" trains were stopped in their tracks, death threats sent to local journalists and dharnas staged.

To be fair, Ganguly doesn't encourage any of this. Unlike Tendulkar, however, he doesn't suffer undue pangs of self-deprecation either.

South Africa will clearly make or break his career. Whether it will alter Ganguly's stature in his home state is quite another matter.