What an irony it is!!! The man who gave everything to prepare a team which is now popularly known as ‘Team India’ has no takers in the business of the grand event called Indian Premier League (IPL).
I strongly believe that the word ‘Team India’ has one and only one synonym and no cricket lover can deny that……‘Team Ganguly’.
The man who was given a team which was under ‘match fixing scandal’ and the players like Md. Azaharuddin and Ajay Jadeja and Nayan Mongia who were the middle order strength were banned. During that time, team was more or less solely dependent on Sachin and was known as one man army. When nobody was there to lead the side, the team was offered to the most promising cricketer, Sourav Ganguly (The other promising classic player was Rahul Dravid of the same era, now known as ‘The Wall’).
This new leader of the team took the responsibility as a challenge and prepared the young brigade which was later termed as ‘Team India’. So, he was the one who prepared the ‘Team India’ with some young lads. He taught the team an attitude to fight, to do ‘tit for tat’ and not to be kneed down just like that. He backed the players aggressively and sometimes brought back the players, who he felt were needed to make the ‘Team India’. He did whatever was in the best interest of the team with the help of Coach John Wright.
He gave an opportunity to now known as ‘The Wall’, to keep behind the wickets whose career in ODI was going to end because of his slow strike rate though he was considered a book in himself when it comes to the Test Cricket. As there was no good wicket-keeper batsman at that time (after Nayan Mongia being banned), the decision gave ‘The Wall’ an opportunity and time to redefine himself. Being a great player, Dravid utilized the opportunity with both the hands and changed his playing style to suit himself to the ODI format. And Indian Cricket Team found its wicket keeper as a recognized batsman. It was one of the turning point of the new ‘Team India’, another being the inclusion of an attacking player ‘Virender Sehwag’ and pairing him with Sachin Tendulkar to open the innings for India which changed the fate of Indian Cricket and of Ganguly as well (will be described later, how?).
After that many young cricketers had been included, supported and backed by ‘Team India Captain’ which were the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Md. Kaif, Zaheer Khan, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh (though he was there in the team for quite some time before but was ignored and brought back) to name a few. Earlier, he brought back Javagal Srinath when he felt the need of the bowler in the Indian team which was never happened before in my memory.
And whatever happened thereafter is a history and will be remembered as 'The Golden Era of Indian Cricket'.
Having said that, it will be unfair if I won’t quote that ‘A Captain is as good as his team is’. Yes, I agree that without the team he had, he could not have made the ‘Team India’ but it was only he, who backed each player he felt is needed for the betterment of Indian Cricket. MS Dhoni is successfully follwoing him but the creator is only one, Sourav Ganguly.
As I mentioned earlier, the fate of the Indian Captain changed with the decision of pairing Sehwag with Sachin to open the Innings. Previously he himself used to open the innings with Sachin and the opening pair was regarded as the best opening pair in the cricketing world for a long time. For the sake of ‘Team India’, he lowered down his order of batting to no.4 and that started the downturn of ‘Prince of Kolkata, Sourav Ganguly’. His performance began deteriorating soon and then some defeats afterwards with the involvement of worst coach in the history of Indian Cricket, Greg Chappel, made him a vulnerable cricketer and he lost his credibility as a batsman and as a leader. With not so good performance on the pitch and the talks outside the pitch and a ban for some matches were enough to ignore him in the Indian side. Sadly, the side which he solely made himself with the help of John Wright has no place for him. Though I agree it was a good decision to drop him from the side at that time and it gave him the time to work on his weaknesses and improve his performance, but the way he was treated was not acceptable to him or his followers.
The man of the fighting attitude made his comeback after some time and made his critics quiet with his performance but somehow dropped again from the side. He again performed well in first class matches and came back again to prove that he is not going to leave cricket that way. This dropping and coming back to the side kept continue for quite some time and he proved to the world that he is the person of fighting spirit and self-respect. With lots of great performance after come backs, he began to be referred as ‘King of comebacks’. But then came a day when he was in one of his best form, he said ‘Alvida’ to International Cricket apart from continuing with IPL. The decision came because he had always lived on his terms in the past (if you know the history of 1992) and was not ready to accept the treatment that was given to him.
But he made a mistake at that time by not quitting from IPL as well because all the work done goes in vain in the time of continuous failure and the words, ‘Success has many followers, failure has none’ seem to be true for this situation.
Similarly, because of lacklustre performance of KKR, he has no takers in either of 10 teams instead of the fact that he was the highest run getter from KKR in IPL 3 and performed well in IPL 1 after a slow start while any Tom, Dick or Harry is being picked at an unimaginable prices.
That is the end of a chapter of once Team India Captain, Sourav Ganguly.
I want to close this by saying ‘Chadte Suraj ko sabhi salaam karte hain’ but they forget that ‘Suraj agle din fir chadega’ and Ganguly will also come to the fore again. And even if he won’t, his glorious past achievement and contribution will glitter in our hearts and he will be remembered as the creator of so called ‘Team India’.
He was not the best batsmen in the world but he was the best captain of India and one of best captains in the world.
