Aug 23 2009
The ODI Enigma called Sourav Ganguly
Long before Ganguly became famous as the second Indian to score two successive centuries on debut and the test after that, there was an 18-year old who had toured Australia in 1991-92 for the erstwhile Benson and Hedges tri-series. This just-turned-adult with a razor-thin moustache went on to represent his country in only one match in that tournament – at Brisbane – before being discarded away in the deep, dark recesses of Indian cricket.
He had struggled in that lone rendezvous with international cricket, and when India had gone on to lose that match, had been confined to the backburner. Relegated to carrying drinks for the rest of the tour, there had been serious rumblings about his attitude, his defiance for order and his reluctance, to carry drinks! At the end of the series, he had been given the marching orders, and for long he was the forgotten man of Indian cricket. Not too many gave him much chance or hope, of a comeback and even when he did, it was ‘blamed’ on the quota system that purportedly existed.
As Ganguly would have turned to walk back to the pavilion on that fateful ODI debut at Brisbane, not too many – including Ganguly himself – would have imagined in their wildest dreams that this right-handed-turned-southpaw would go on to play more than 300 ODIs after this baptism-by-fire debut and the months surrounding it. Nor would they have imagined that he would go on to add 11360 more runs to that miserable debut inning that he had had endured; in the process becoming only the second Indian to do so after Sachin Tendulkar. Or the glorious set of shenanigans that he would bring to the Indian cricketing table over a period of ten odd years. Plainly speaking, not too many would have had expected him to grace the region on the off-side like he did over the career, which made some christen him as a near-God there.
After his return to international cricket, his first fifty did not take too much time coming – it was only in his fifth ODI against Australia that he got there batting at number seven – but the maiden century was a longer wait. However, the good news for India was that he had started opening the inning by then, and it was as an opener that he would go on to play most of his crunchingly delicious innings in the shorter format of the game. At the peak of his career, most of them bordered on the lines of brilliance, while some, like the one he played at Taunton – an exhilarating 183 off 158 deliveries – that he carved against Sri Lanka in the 1999 World Cup provided unparalleled thrill and delight to the cricket fans and statisticians alike.
Early in 1998 though, he had proved his worth as an opener while chasing a near-impossible target of more than 300 against Pakistan. His century, along with Robin Singh’s 80-odd had paved way for a Hrishikesh Kanitkar boundary in the final over to seal an Indian win in a thrilling encounter. Very soon after the 1999 World Cup knock, he went on to become the first Indian to score a couple of hundreds in the limited overs format Down Under, but couldn’t prevent the Indians from losing all but one match in that series. Saddled with captaincy, he soon smashed consecutive centuries in the then-known Mini World Cup, as he also led the team to a respectable runner-up position in that tourney.
If one begun ranting about some of Ganguly’s great innings, the list would almost be insurmountable. For someone who has opened in majority of the matches that he played in, he formed an amazing opening partnership with Sachin Tendulkar and had an excellent record at the top. The left-handed-right-handed combination was as explosive as a hand-grenade and would rarely allow the opposition bowlers to settle in any sort of a rhythm. More often than not, the duo would have smashed the bowling to smithereens even before the opponents had a chance to bat their eyelid. Tendulkar was aggressive enough, but in comparison with Ganguly, he sometimes looked orthodox, someone who played with a straighter bat! In fact, for someone who was said to not enjoy playing the pace bowlers as much as others, Ganguly’s foot movement against the quicker variety was as swift as that of a ballroom-dancer. His dance down the wicket off pace bowlers to loft them over any of vast expanse of empty spaces between the cover-point boundary to the square-leg, was a treat to the eyes of everyone except the bowlers themselves.
And then there was the newly-christened, ‘secret weapon’ that he possessed during his heydays; his bowling. Toronto in Canada saw many of these stupendous and man-winning performances, as his dibbly-dobbly out-swingers would float in the air and swing late enough to mesmerize all the Pakistani batsmen. Small matter that he went on pick up four successive Man-of-the-Match awards and single-handedly win the series 4-1! In the meantime, he was also saddled with the rigors of captaincy. It was of little concern, as he went from strength to strength, leading the team into a World Cup and a Mini-World Cup final, and sharing one of these smaller versions of the World Cups with Sri Lanka.
Unfortunately, as in life – and to repeat a cliché – all good things do need to come to an end. It was around 2004-05, that Greg Chappell happened to Indian cricket. Without going into the merits and demerits of his existence in India, the saga only turned for the worse for Ganguly. First, his captaincy came under fire, and slowly the blaze spread to his batting, fielding, fitness and anything and everything that came under the Ganguly purview. By the time this soap had had its usual twists and turns, of funny and bizarre, wanted and not-so-wanted, letter leaks and loophole plugs, Ganguly had aged a year physically, but mentally, he would have been at least a decade older.
Almost one year later, with Chappell on his last steps going out of the fray, and Ganguly clawing back, he was selected to play against the West Indies in a lead-up to the 2007 edition of the World Cup. Typical of the man, he went on to hit the highest-score of the inning, a 98, that saw India get to 338/3 in the fifty overs! However, that did not mean that his place in the side was a foregone conclusion. In his last one year of ODIs, he had an average of 43, but that deteriorated to less than 30 in the last ten. The runs were definitely coming in, but, there was an issue.
Towards the end of his career, after the oh-so-many comebacks that he had made to the Indian team, he seemed to have got his run-scoring capability back, as an ODI batsman. There were some other issues though. For one, fielding, which had never been Ganguly’s strength, had gone down a notch or two. So had his ‘athleticism’ while running between the wickets; his usual banes. But more importantly, the pace at which he scored those runs had begun to drop. So while the strike-rates of other batsmen in general, and the team in specific showed an upward trend – due to the extra Powerplays, the reduction of boundary lengths, the broader bats and all that – Ganguly’s (strike rate) had actually stagnated. With him batting as an opener in most of these matches, he had a certain task of not only giving the team a good start, but also playing according to the needs of the team; and that was to score at the expected rate. Those close to the Indian team did harbour this feeling that there was a certain amount of putting-self-preservation before the team’s interest and the same did not go down too well with the selectors. With the futuristic approach and the selectorial focus on youth, Ganguly’s days looked to be getting numbered.
The above combination was a potent one, and in the final analysis led to the final demise of Ganguly from OD cricket. Just a few matches after Rahul Dravid had been shown the door from the limited overs version, Ganguly made his exit through the same one. Sadly for Team India, the opening Ganguly-Tendulkar combination, who had eclipsed the likes of Gordon Greendige and Desmond Haynes as the best ever one at the top of the order, was never to be seen again, as almost an year later, the first real ‘Dada’ of the Indian cricket had called it quits.
One of the best ever ODI players of the world, had decided to walk away into night.
