Sourav Ganguly: Picking between Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh was most dificult part of captaincy
Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly has revealed that choosing whom to leave out among the spin duo of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh for overseas Tests was his biggest headache during his 5-year tenure as skipper.
"Lot of people think captaincy is an easy job to do but when you have greats like Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, VVS Laxman and more, you have a lot of answering to do," Ganguly was quoted as saying by NDTV at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
India have always preferred playing two spinners at home and on spinner friendly pitches. However in overseas conditions, playing two spinners on pitches that largely assist the seamers is too big a risk, a risk that Ganguly was not willing to take.
"My biggest challenge in that era was to tell either of Harbhajan or Kumble that you're not playing in overseas condition. If I tell Anil in seaming conditions in England that Harbhajan has 50 wickets in a year, you take a break in this game, he would say I've got 400 Test wickets," Ganguly said.
The effective pair of Kumble and Harbhajan were an intergral part of India’s Test side under Ganguly. The former even went on to lead India and ended up as India’s leading wicket taker in Test matches, retiring with 619 scalps.
Kumble was on the verge of retirement in 2003: Ganguly
However, there was one occasion when Ganguly had to literally plead to Kumble to stop the leg-spinner from announcing retirement.
"I remember in Brisbane, we had to leave Anil out of the game. After the match he came to me and said I want to go back and retire. He had so much pride and was such a champion that sitting out hurt him. I had to somehow hold his hands and say Anil I'll get you to play, don't worry," told the 42-year-old.
Laxman declined my request to open: Ganguly
Talking about VVS Laxman, Ganguly recalled that the middle order batsman once refused to open on his request.
“There was a time I asked Laxman to open and he refused. I would ask Anil to sit out once in a while and I had to answer ten questions,” he added.
“Another big challenge was to handle Ashish Nehra. He was a dear friend and every time I would leave him out because I was worried about his ankle, I knew the doorbell would ring in the night after the game. I had to give him an explanation," he concluded.