Prince of Kolkata is India's most successful ever captain

Profiles / Andrew Hughes / 28 August 2008 / Leave a Comment

A changing of the guard is imminent in the Indian test team and Andrew Hughes knows whose place is most vulnerable.

With Australia due in the autumn, it is entirely possible that India's selectors will give the veterans one last twirl. Their best days may be gone but Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and Laxman have fought and won against these opponents. Chucking in a Sharma or a Badrinath right now might be seen as risky.

Yet even if they survive the autumn, the logic of the argument that one of these once mighty oaks needs to be felled is becoming self-fulfilling. As their reflexes slow, their every failure is contrasted with the successes of their more youthful counterparts. Whereas the Test veterans poked and stuttered their way to a series defeat in Sri Lanka, Dhoni's young one day guns have just clinched their series 3-1.

Of the four elder statesmen, it is Sourav Ganguly who is most vulnerable. His average of sixteen was actually slightly better than Tendulkar's. But there isn't a selector on the continent brave enough to put a line through the little Master's name, whilst for the Prince of Kolkata; being dropped would hardly be a novel experience. Nor indeed would the vitriol being sprayed in his direction, the sly references to his sluggish running, his sloppy out fielding and iffy catching.

It has been Ganguly's fate to divide cricket opinion in his country like few other sportsmen. Like moths to a neon light, his career has attracted swarms of critics and adorers, at times obscuring his contribution as a batsman. But he stands comparison with any of his predecessors. Averaging a touch over forty in both formats, he is the fourth highest run scorer in Indian Test history and the second highest in the one day game, dwarfed only by Tendulkar himself, with whom Ganguly once formed a dynamic opening partnership.

Though he bats lower down these days, his trademark off-side game is still evident, a masala of delicate touches behind square, languid uppish drives through cover and punchy lofts straight down the ground. He is a durable batsman for all seasons, accelerating or digging in as the situation demands. Only his tendency to waft at wide balls and recoil from short pitched bowling have held him back from greatness.

But his legacy, once the dust settles on his turbulent career, will be as his country's most successful captain. Taking over when Indian cricket was toxic with the fall-out from the match-fixing scandals, he built a team strong on self-belief, overturned the stereotypes of the polite and inoffensive Indian cricketer and challenged the best, at home and abroad. They triumphed over Australia in 2001; fought them to a standstill in their own backward two years later; secured a first ever series victory in Pakistan and reached the final of the World Cup.

Criticism that, in the process, his team occasionally overstepped the mark in their on field behaviour, were fair. But the charges aimed at Ganguly personally, of a confrontational style and of arrogance, were based on a misapprehension. He was no Gavaskar or Ranatunga, spoiling for a fight with the old colonial powers, nor was he an aloof aristocrat. He was and still is, both highly competitive and utterly assured of his own ability, a combination of qualities common enough in Cape Town or Canberra but relatively unusual in an Indian cricketer. Many in the game struggled to work him out and as a result, he seemed to have the knack of getting under people's skin without particularly trying to.

Perhaps his main failing was in his treatment of the Indian press. Not given to platitudes, he was always great value at press conferences. But a habit of using Kolkata journalists to ask planted questions and feeding them exclusives did not endear him to the rest of India's media corps. When his private and frank discussion with Greg Chappell became public, he had fewer friends in the press than he needed or deserved.

Of course, in his home state, he is always assured of total support. He is loved and revered by Bengalis to a degree that is extraordinary even for the fiercely regional culture of Indian cricket. If the national selectors do make Ganguly the first of the famous four to fall, it will be boom time again for the banner makers and effigy sellers of Kolkata.