Sourav Ganguly, the former Indian captain and current president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), celebrated his 49th birthday on Thursday. Ganguly is credited for igniting the flames of Indian cricket.
The current BCCI president has 11363 ODI runs to his name, including 22 hundred. In 113 Test games, he scored 7212 runs. ‘Dada’ was genuinely exceptional, from his daring attitude with the bat and as captain to displaying faith and pumping life into his squad through difficult times.
Here are five decisions made by Sourav Ganguly as captain that profoundly impacted Indian cricket:
No. 1: Sourav Ganguly’s strength as a leader was his ability to trust his intuition. Laxman was the only batter who seemed at ease during the memorable Kolkata Test against Australia in 2001. On Day 3, when India was requested to continue, Ganguly surprised everyone by promoting Laxman above Dravid, and the rest is history. Both Laxman and Dravid batted all day, with the former hitting 281 to help the hosts pull off an unexpected victory. Spinner Harbhajan Singh completed the balance of the work on Day 5. India ended Australia’s 16-match winning streak with their memorable victory.
No. 2: Virender Sehwag was a middle-order batsman who batted at No.6 when he hit a century against South Africa on his Test debut. However, Ganguly’s proclivity for the odd prompted him to reconsider, and he finally asked the right-hander to start the innings. Ganguly had certainly struck gold, as evidenced by the subsequent results. Sehwag became one of India’s most successful Test openers, with an average near 50 and two triple hundreds to his credit. He was instrumental in many of India’s triumphs, particularly overseas.
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No. 3: ‘Dada’ did not have MS Dhoni at his disposal for the bulk of his career. However, Ganguly’s search for a permanent wicketkeeper came to an end when he requested Rahul Dravid to take up the gloves in order to improve the side’s balance. In spite of his reluctance, Dravid steadily adapted to the role by obeying his skipper’s wishes and was eventually trusted to play at the back. In addition to finding the right person for the job, Ganguly also served as a secondary batsman from 2002-2004. Dravid was moved to No. 5, where he ended up playing some of his finest ODI innings.
No. 4: Another brilliant move by Ganguly was to call up a young MS Dhoni to the national team after only one successful Indian series in Kenya. The choice astounded everyone, but that wasn’t the end of the unexpected choices. Ganguly chose to elevate Dhoni to No. 3 after the Jharkhand-born batsman first struggled with the bat. Dhoni smashed 148 in an ODI against Pakistan and Vizag in 2005.
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No. 5: Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan and MS Dhoni all rose to prominence under Ganguly’s guidance. Ganguly’s tenacity and drive are still spoken to this day. He rebuilt the team from the ground up, bringing it up to the level it should have been at before the 2000 match-fixing incidents. Ganguly instilled confidence in his players and persuaded them that they could win wherever. Ganguly’s foreign record of 11 away wins in 28 Tests reflects the country’s growth throughout his tenure.
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