Well i really wanted to discuss Saurav Ganguly for a long time with ppl, but the problem was that it is very difficult to find a rational supporter of Saurav who dare to think beyond the obvious (like tcs) and fail to rise from being a bengali to being an Indian.
But since Mr Gupta,who happens to be coleague cum ex - classmate, is a person whom i have known to have always kept his ear open for logical views, i tght that i should jot down some thoughts after recieving an email from him about Mr Ganguly and his great deeds. Sometimes i wonder why Sourav is always linked with an email. May it be from My great Friend Dipanjan Gupta or from the ordinary Greg Chappell.
This post is also somewhat to convince my own self about my view on saurav.
Well i think this would be a long post , so my sincere appologies to all if it seems boring.
When Saurav Ganguly burst into the international areana in 1996 if i am correct at lords.Like every Indian i was really happy and that he was a Bengali, was just icing on the cake.
A few matches down the lane, may be arround 20 -30 odi's and 10 test, should be good enough for you to pass a verdict on a player. What came accross to me was that saurav was a good hand eye co-ordination player , but lacked sound technique and agility ,some thing that Gundappa Viswanath, Rahul Dravid,Sunil Gavaskar had. I have intentionally left Sachin Tendulkar's name from the list. Since it has been a habit whenever we talk about Saurav we drag Sachin and make comparision. I may refer to sachin sometime later. From then my idea about saurav Ganguli has always been of a Great One day player. But only a good test match player not a great one. That Saurav Ganguly is a more than good captain adds another dimension to his repotire.
The tremendous courage that Saurav Ganguly showed at Lord's by scoring a century on debut should be a lesson for youngsters about discipline and dedication. I appreciate that from the core of my heart.
My problem is not much with Saurav Ganguly but moreto do with the blind supporters of his and the concept of the pride of Bengal attached to him. I thought that i would rather jot down my ideas one by one so that they are organized in a better way.
1) First of all, we would never acknowledge any of Saurav's bad performance. I think we live in a highly competitive world.No body is acknowleged here for non performance (except our politicians) in any field of life. When Swades flopped no body cared whether it was sharukh or any new comer. You dont perform and that should be it. I know its harsh but thats the way it isand once it is so for the rest of fields , it should not be any different for cricket.The point i am making is that people should not choose past performance as a criterion for present selection. Also people dont give you a graceful exit , one has to command that and take it on his own.
2) We would always compare Saurav with Sachin. People should realise that Sachin is a maestro. 35 centuries in Test cricket doesn't come as a joke. To add to that 18 years in International cricket without a single media controversy. If at all any body should be a role model then its him.I dont forsee a 16 year old saurav getting hit by a waqar bouncer and blood spitting from nose and still refusing to leave the field. Also most of the time to cover up Saurav's miseries, we would point our fingers on other people's deficiencies, like Sachin cannot play under pressure,Virender Sehwag is also failing with the bat.Its like a little kid failing in his exam and when asked for an explanation will say "well everyone else also failed".
3) Another logic for including saurav is that he is a great captain. People forget that , a captain is a player first then a captain. Saurav Ganguli's recent performance in both forms of the game doesn't make him eligible for the team as a player. so shall we take him only bcos he is a good captain. Also is Indian cricket has such a dull future that we don't have alternative captain in a country of one billion...
4) We talk that he has brought aggression in the team, i think ppl forget that the actual killer spirit was brought by John Wright. What saurav ganguli has brought is only indiscipline.If swearing at others is aggression and makes a good player, then i guess the great west indian fast bowlers would have never exsisted or Andre Nel would have been a better bowler than Shaun Pollock. Taking off his shirt at Lord's is not something i find has a place in the Gentleman's game.People say Saurav has been instrumental in the rise of players like Yuvraj,kaif and harbhajan... But at the same time we forget dumping of players like Sanjay Bangar, Aakash Chopra, Sarandeep Singh.
People talk about saurav's glorious victories , just take out two men out from those scorecards Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman and then see at the record.....
5) Whats appaulling are the columns written by the so called connossiers of cricket (Gopal Basu, Sambaran Banerjee). What happened at eden gardens ,during the recent one day international between India and SA, was pathetic , I felt ashamed to be a bengali and sitting at the eden gardens and see Rahul Dravid booed.
People questioning the integrity of a player like Dravid is pathetic and sucks.. 90% of Saurav's victories are attributed single handedly to him....
Dravid has got the captaincy job not by default , but because he is a good captain....He is as aggressive than any body on field... Just because he doesn't swear or takes of his shirt doesnt proove he is meek....
Lastly a word about Greg chappell. I dont knw how many of you ppl have seen his footages of a player....I have had the good fortune of watching his recordings.... His technique is something , that only Geoff Boycott would match.He is the best thing to happen for Indian cricket....
People accuse his of being anti sourav..I would like to make them remember , that it was Chappel who was instrumental in the 144 that saurav made at Brisbane , that century saved his career both as a player and captain....
And now also what did chappel do wrong. He had only advised saurav to quit because of his performance.... He didnt go to the media , It was Saurav who spoke to the media abt what was discussed in the dressing room. That chappell's email was leaked was not his fault...As a coach he was doing the job he was paid to do, reporting to the management what went wrong...
I think most of the players in the modern world are Hand Eye co -ordination players , Like VVS Laxman,Saurav,Sehwag,Jaysuriya.There a very few technically brilliant batsmen like Sachin, Rahul,Mark Waugh, Aravinda di silva or Saeed Anwar...
Hand eye co -ordination players have a specfic playing span and i believe saurav is over it... This is true for sachin also, whatever sachin is playing today is purely because of his technical brilliance...He has also lost is hand eye co-ordination so we dont see the flamboyant sachin anymore....
I am a Bengali at heart and a proud one , but i am also an Indian . As John F Kennedy once said,
I am a free man,then an American,then a democrat blab blab.... Same is true for me, I am a free man, then an Indian and finally a Bengali...
I cannot how a bandh in calcutta can change saurav's fortune and take him back to the team..
If so called hooligans claim to be correct on the grounds that Saurav Ganguly has been hard done as a citizen of India by the BCCI... Then i just wonder, why there are no protests about the exclusion of Zaheer Khan ,who dismissed Ganguly twice for duck in the Ranji matches, took 25 wickets in 3 ranji encounters and yet was dropped so as to accomodate Saurav in the team..
One of my friends once told me that we have to support saurav as a bengali because outside bengal as Bengali's are recognized as Bengali's first and Indians later...
I couldn't disagree with him...But at the same time i feel two incorrect things never make a correct thing.. So i feel ,i would rather stick to my anti -linguistic idea than be a chauvinistic Bengali....
After all this, i still hope as an Indian and ofcourse as a Bengali, that Saurav Ganguli re deems his lost form and India doesn't loose a good player soon...
