Many years ago, Rahul Dravid famously made the statement, "On The Offside, There is GOD, then there is Saurav Ganguly". This statement was reflective of the batsman whose smooth timing on the offside was better bar none. That was a phase of Saurav's career where he wasspoken about in the same breath as Sachin or Lara. Of course their careers have gone in different directions since, Saurav's career has been a colorful one.
I was planning this post ever since the day Saurav Ganguly announced his retirement, but I wanted to wait for his final innings to get a complete picture of the man. His retirement series was as colorful as the rest of his career, it showcased the Saurav of old, but with definite aspects of the man who came back to regain his place in the team and show that he is made from a harder metal than many made him out to be.
What defines this man? What makes him so special to us? Ganguly, Good Or Bad, has always managed to evoke a great deal of emotions from the Indian Fan.
- He was the fluent opening bat who came to the middle with Sachin to create the most explosive opening partnerships of their times. It was a time in Indian cricket when you felt that if these two guys clicked, India would win, but were they to fall, that would be the end of the game, most of the time.
- He was a spinners nightmare. Anyone who has seen Saurav in his prime, must have seen him waltz down the track and loft them out of the ground. He did it with such consistency and such grace that it was inevitable that if a spinner bowled when he was at the crease, he was going to get hammered.
- The style of batting did not change from One Dayers to Test matches. He was the graceful and explosive middle order batsman, who brought some difference to a middle order filled with right hand batsman.
- He was a useful military medium bowler who bowled those innocuous slow deliveries that every batsman felt he could whack him out the ground... but, landed up getting themselves out.
This was Saurav of the old, the man who was an integral part of the team in the '90s... But with the dawn of the new millennium the world came to see him in a all new light. This man, took over "arguably" one of the toughest jobs in the Cricketing world or maybe even all of sport. He took over the Captaincy of India. A time when fans were disgusted with the skeletons that were falling out of the closets of their cricketing superstars.
But for the new captain, who some where in his consciousness must have felt like a lamb to slaughter, took up the job and made the team his own. One might even say he took to it like a Duck takes to Water.. (Note : I know it sound ridiculous, and it's one line with two cliches, so forgive the puns. Ridiculous Sentence Intended!)
He took the team to the knockout trophy in Kenya and managed to go all the way to the finals. What Ganguly managed, weather he managed to win or otherwise, was to build a team with attitude, a team that went where no Indian team had gone before, a team that was not scared to tread on tradition and wanted to win at all cost. He infused the team with energy and brought out an aggressive streak that was always evident in his batting.
He took the team all round the world, he beat all comers (at least once). He made sure the tag of Tigers At Home and Bunnies Abroad was buried and the world just spoke of them as Team India. That was perhaps Ganguly's greatest achievement, he turned a bunch of talented individuals into a team. An image to this respect that stays in our mind was the huddle on the cricket ground at the fall of a wicket. They all get together to push one another on.
But, for all the good that was happening in the team, Ganguly's fortune changed. With a change in the team management came Greg Chappell. I guess there can be no talking about Ganguly without referring to Chappell. During the 2003-04 tour of Australia, Ganguly visited Chappell to get tips on improving his batting, that relationship evolved into a partnership that was supposed to take India to the next level, but landed up being a battle of the egos. They both lost that war. But Ganguly was the bigger loser, being stripped of his captaincy and losing place in the side. But in retrospect, that one year in the wilderness toughened him. He was no longer the fluent and hard hitting batsman of old, so he re-designed his game and became a gritty accumulator of runs. The new Ganguly was more consistent, more reliable and so much more calm. It was noticeable that this was not the man who bared this chest in the holiest of holy places in English Cricket .. Lords.
The new Ganguly reached the old heights, that his previous avatar had been touching on a consistent basis and at times he even surpassed them. The registered his first and only Double Century in Test Cricket and also notched up a century in front of his home crowd at the Eden Gardens.
All in all it was a career of 3 parts. One young man making is way in the game and turning heads. A gritty leader who was India's best Captain and the Hero re-invented who came back to reclaim his glory. In his captaincy, Saurav Ganguly had made the team his own, so much so that the team that we see today on the field and some of the guys we look to as our cricketing superstars were groomed by him, they are all His Boys. It was evident in his last test match, when Dhoni handed him the captaincy for the last 3 overs that, it was the place he felt most comfortable. At the top of the tree, as the leader. You could see the smile. The man who took Indian cricket to it's greatest heights only for him to fall to his lowest of lows was back at the top of the mountain and he was leaving the cricketing world, with his head held high, as the best Left Hand Batsman India has ever had, a legend in his own right and as the King of Kolkata and for a brief while, all of India.
Rahul.
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