Sourav Ganguly’s biggest contribution was to make Indian cricketers believe in themselves
When India defeated England in 1971 at the Oval Test, with a deadly bowling spell from Bhagwath Chandrasekhar, there was a sense of disbelief that overpowered most Indian team members. That was the first time India had defeated England in England. What might have also contributed to the team’s disbelief was that the win had come after just a few months of its landmark victory against West Indies in West Indies.
A year later, Sourav Chandidas Ganguly was born in Calcutta, as Kolkata was known then. By the time Indians heralded their arrival as a cricketing power — symbolised so poignantly by Balwinder Singh Sandhu’s away-going delivery dislodging the bails of Gordon Greenidge, Kapil Dev’s astonishing catch as he ran backwards in the mid-wicket region to remove Viv Richards and India lifting the Prudential World Cup at Lord’s in 1983 — the young Ganguly was only 11 years old and still playing soccer at Calcutta’s Maidan. He took to cricket four years later by joining a cricket-coaching academy in Calcutta, largely at the insistence of his elder brother Snehasish. The rest is history, one that has seen Ganguly scale many highs and face many more setbacks in quick succession.
Ganguly’s failure to find a buyer last week at the auctions for the fourth season of the Indian Premier League was one of those lows in his eventful career — a setback from which he is not likely to recover. He will turn 40 next year. Rarely have cricketers above 40 made a comeback. Not known for his athleticism even in his younger days, Ganguly’s failed bid to get a buyer marks the end of his career as a player.
Even his die-hard supporters will admit that at this stage of his career, Ganguly is simply incapable of repeating the kind of feat that he achieved in 2006. That year, he had taken on an adversarial coach, Greg Chappell, got back among runs in domestic matches forcing a recall to the Indian team for its South African tour and then emerged as the highest scorer on the tour. With the sun now clearly setting on this mercurial cricketer, this, therefore, is an appropriate occasion to understand what made India’s most successful Test captain (21 wins out of 49 matches) click and what his biggest contribution was to Indian cricket.
Will history remember Ganguly as a great batsman? Not really. His delectable off-side strokes will always remain a treat for the eyes, but then most left-hand batsmen are delightful stroke players. His Test-batting average is in the low forties. His suspect technique against the fast rising ball is a good enough reason to strike him off the list of great Indian batsmen. Was he a good fielder? Even his greatest admirer will concede that Ganguly was a very ordinary fielder with many flaws. Worse, he was a poor runner between the wickets. On many occasions, he would be run out (on one occasion he was short of the crease simply because he was too lazy to ground the bat in time) or would be responsible for his partner getting out. He did work hard on overcoming these shortcomings, but then he was simply not there in these departments of the game.
If he excelled in one department, it was in injecting into an Indian team, suffering from low morale, a desire to get together and tell the competition not to take it for granted. Remember that India’s cricket administration asked Ganguly to lead the team in 2000, when a match-fixing scandal had ravaged the Indian team’s morale, taking a toll of many top-notch Indian cricketers. The reigning captain, Sachin Tendulkar, had decided to step down, ostensibly on health grounds but also because he realised that he was not a great captain and would do much better as a batsman without having to carry the burden of his teammates and their worries. Ganguly slipped into his new role almost like a duck takes to water.
Ganguly was controversial from the day he took charge of the Indian cricket team. Rival teams never liked his aggression — on the field and often off the field. Thus, he would make Australian captain, Steve Waugh, wait for the toss or take off his shirt at the Lord’s balcony to celebrate India’s winning runs. Many Indian cricket administrators, senior cricketers and purists did not like it, but Ganguly remained unruffled. That brand of aggression was of course infectious and many younger members of the team were now more aggressive and willing to walk that extra mile while facing a rival team.
Along with his aggression as a captain came a certain kind of grittiness in his batting. He took the Indian team to the World Cup final in 2003 (he had four centuries in that World Cup), and lost only to an Australia that was at its peak form. His century at Brisbane against Australia later that year paved the ground for a keenly-fought series where the Kangaroos were convincingly cornered. Australia’s decline had already begun and Ganguly with his team had a role to play in expediting that fall.
A year later, he led India to victory against Pakistan. Ganguly had become by then the darling of a xenophobic nation. His ability to pick a bunch of talented youngsters and motivate them to deliver their best was also an area where he set new standards. He even sacrificed his opening slot to make way for the hugely talented Virender Sehwag so that he could open the innings with Tendulkar.
In a short time, Ganguly earned the loyalty and unflinching support of most team members. Ganguly became the rallying point for a resurgent Indian team — aggressive, unwilling to let go, even when the chips are down, and keen to win at all costs. These were qualities that the Indian team in the past lacked even while winning matches now and then, as they did against New Zealand in 1968 or West Indies and England in 1971.
Ganguly is undoubtedly India’s most aggressive and successful cricket captain. However, his biggest contribution is in making Indian cricketers believe in themselves — a quality that M S Dhoni’s number-one-ranked team continues to nurture to its advantage.
