A tribute to former India captain Sourav Ganguly
Sourav Chandidas Ganguly is a familiar name to many Indians who grew up watching cricket especially in the late 90s and early 2000s. Nicknamed the "God of offside", he made his debut during the 1996 England tour. He started off his test career in a grand fashion scoring a hundred, 131 at the 'Mecca of Cricket' -Lords, then followed it up with 136 in the next Test at Nottingham.
He was a colossus in ODI cricket as well, scoring more than 11000 runs. During 2000, he took over the Indian captaincy. A captain par excellence, he installed the self-belief, never say die attitude within the Indian team who were considered poor travellers. The famous Kolkata Test match, in 2001, which stopped the Aussie juggernaut, changed the Indian team fortunes.
The team went from strength to strength. Rahul Dravid became his able deputy. Tendulkar started playing with great freedom again. Virender Sehwag was promoted to open, and redefined test opening batting all together, taking the opposition to cleaners, right at the start of the innings. Ever-dependable VVS Laxman often batting at No 6 was the 'crisis man', generally guarding the tail. Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and 'Bhajji' Harbhajan Singh blossomed under his captaincy, with the able guidance of the ever dependable 'Jumbo' Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath.
Ganguly himself performed admirably with the bat, playing many crucial knocks, not to forget the knock of 144 at the Gabba, on a green top, which set the tone for the series. India went on to draw the series 1-1. They had come pretty close to winning the series, if not for a couple of bad sessions in Melbourne during the second test, which resulted in them losing that particular test.
They had also drawn the previous overseas tour in England in 2002, '1-1'. The biggest overseas series win in his captaincy CV was when India won for the first time in Pakistan in 2004, with all the players performing to their potential.
Ganguly fans cannot forget the Indian team's mes\morable run either in the 2003 world cup wherein they had won eight matches on a trot, en-route to the final, after losing to Australia in the group stages. Tendulkar reached his peak form during the tournament, There used to be some invariable comments from the opposition bowlers as a part of the pre-match mind games, and Tendulkar used to answer with his bat. Not a single bowler was spared. The only blip came in the final, where Ricky Ponting played an extraordinary innings. The ease at which 350 is being chased these days, how we wished the same had happened on that fateful day- March 23, 2003. In hindsight, it was still the right decision to field first that day, considering it was a seaming track. It just turned out be an off day for India. The contributions of Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Virender Sehwag, Ashish Nehra, Zaheer Khan, Anil Kumble and last but not the least, wicketkeeper Rahul Dravid are not to be forgotten either.
The 'ice cool' MS Dhoni made his debut later in 2004 under Sourav's captaincy and holds a special place of his own in Indian cricket history now.
Ganguly had his share of lows after 2005 when we was stripped of the captaincy, omitted for bad form and also the Greg Chappell saga, but he came back like a phoenix, during the 2006 South Africa tour. He performed admirably for the next two years even notching up a double hundred, 239 against Pakistan in Bangalore during the 2007 test series.
After 12 good years, he finally signed off a memorable career, retiring from the game against Australia in 2008 on a high, emulating the great Don Bradman in his own way by getting out for a blot in his final innings. Never mind!