Saturday, November 8, 2008

Well batted, Sir!

I am writing this post on a day when Saurav Ganguly completed a wonderful knock in his farewell Test. Ever since he announced his retirement a fortnight ago, cricket writers and many others have been making a beeline on what he has achieved in his 12 years of international cricket. Let me also join the Bongwagon!

How would I want to remember Dada? It is not the shirt waving incident at Lords. I think he deserves credit for more substantial contributions he made to Indian cricket.

He went to Australia in 1991-92 and went straight into wilderness after the tour. He resurfaced in 1996 as a 23-year-old with a super century at Lords and followed it up with another one in the next one at Trent Bridge. Very few players would have survived a debacle like the one he experienced in 1991-92. That he came back in 1996 and hit a century on debut showed his self-belief.

The Port of Spain test in 2002 was in my view a watershed in Indian cricket. For the first time, a fast bowling trio, Srinath, Nehra, and Zaheer bowled India to a win over West Indies. Huge credit must be due to Saurav because he believed that we could win overseas only if we had three (not two) quick bowlers. With this formula in place and into action, we began to win overseas Test matches pretty regularly. Case in point would be our victories at Port of Spain and Headingly in 2002, Adelaide, Multan, and Rawalpindi in 2004, Johannesburg in 2006, Trent Bridge in 2007, and Perth in 2008.

Few months later, India was playing a Test match at Headingly. Saurav was aware of the halo surrounding the ground - England's own ground where their record was awesome and visitors often struggled to come to terms with the swing and seam conditions that were on offer on this ground. Dravid and Bangar had provided a platform for the Tendulkars and Gangulys to take over. On the second evening, Ganguly was in his eighties and in fading light, the wily English captain, Nasser Hussein took the new ball anticipating that the Indian batsman would appeal for bad light and his new ball bowlers would be fresh the next morning. Instead, Ganguly and Tendulkar went berserk and added some 60-odd runs in no time. I cannot think of any Indian batsman who would have risked a century, particularly at Headingly. The next morning the declaration happened and two days later, India won by an innings.


In the off-season of 2003-04, he made a quiet trip to Australia and spent few days with the Australian legend, Greg Chappell. He was tired of the constant criticism of his inability to play quick bowling and that he wanted to correct this 'feeling.' India was to tour Down Under and this was an ideal opportunity to silence those doubters. The Brisbane Test happened, and Saurav in true dramatic fashion scored a magnificent 144. What a knock!

For the first time, there was a captain who believed in Team India. This could be because he came from a weak zone. I am not insinuating but people in stronger zones have a larger pool of players to look at and therefore develop a myopic vision!