Sourav As Captain :

Captaincy

The mantle of the Indian captaincy fell on him after Tendulkar resigned in disgust. Indian cricket was in shambles when Ganguly took over with India just having lost its first home series in many years to the South Africans. It was in such tumultuous times that Ganguly took over the reigns and he galvanized the team into a fighting combative unit.

Injecting fresh blood

He went about injecting fresh blood into the team and more importantly backed them to do well. He would make sure that the youngsters got a decent run in the team to prove their mettle. He stuck with players like Yuvraj, Zaheer, Harbhajan , Nehra, Pathan and Balaji and they have all repaid their captain's faith in them at some point or the other. First time under his aegis, so many young players were picked.

The stories that involve Ganguly and selection of youngsters are the kind folklores are made of. It is rumored that before the Australian tour to India Ganguly dragged coach John Wright to the nets to see a young off spinner called Harbhajan Singh who had been kicked out of the National Cricket Academy on disciplinary grounds. What followed is now history as Harbhajan took 32 wickets in three matches, especially the test at Eden Gardens as India won one of the most thrilling test series the world has seen. In an inspiring move during the Nairobi ICC Knockout Trophy Ganguly blooded two youngsters, Yuvraj Singh and Zaheer Khan. Both are now permanent fixtures in the side having won games for their country single handedly. Similar stories abound regarding Mohammad Kaif for whose sake Dravid was asked to keep wickets in what is still a controversial topic in Indian cricket.

First bowler culture

 Indian cricket had turned a new leaf. It had discarded its reliance on spinners and regularly sported a bowling attack composed of three pacers and one spinner. Ganguly maintained correctly that to win abroad India needed pacers who could trouble international sides. It was this conviction that led him to leave either Kumble or Harbhajan, both world class spinners in their own right, in order to accomodate the third pacer.

Wow Skipper !

The records speak for themselves when it comes to Ganguly's captaincy.

·India won a Test series outside the subcontinent after more than a decade.

·They won a Test match against Australia in Australia after 22 years. They were the first team to actually challenge Australia in Australia.

·They reached the finals of both the Cricket World Cup and the ICC Knockout Trophy.

Statistics are only part of the equation when measuring the success of a captain. What has been good to see in this team is their togetherness, their ability to fight back from tough times as was evident in wins against England, South Africa ,Sri Lanka and the attitude of never say die which has served them pretty well. It was said after many such wins where they came back from the dead to win a match that this team could walk on water.

Their most famous triumph and in many ways the turning point for the side was their win over England in the Natwest finals where chasing a record 326 for victory India had been reduced to 144 for 5. After the fall of Tendulkar's wicket the English team thought that the fight was over and victory remained only a formality. Nobody told the young guns, Yuvraj Singh and Mohammad Kaif, two of Ganguly's selections, that. Under the most intense pressure they secured an outrageous victory while their mentor and captain watched from the pavilion. In one emotional moment when the winning runs were scored Ganguly took off his t-shirt football style and went berserk. It was a show of emotion from an emotional man whose decisions had come under fire, and had been vindicated in the end.

 

There are people who will say that while Ganguly remains a wonderful man management person, strategy has never been his strong point. But he made up for it with the kind of energy, his passionate desire to win and the self-belief to do it that he has injected into the team. While harsh on his youngsters when they have erred, to the extent of reprimanding them on the pitch, he has always stood by them through thick and thin. It has perhaps earned him the nickname that he will value more than the rest, for it is given by the people who matter the most, his teammates.

 He is called "dada" by his teammates which loosely translates into "elder brother" which is a reflection of the affection and respect that his teammates hold him in .

As for the strategic component he is still learning and improving

His arrogance

 A further point of controversy remains his abrasive manner which sometimes borders on to boorish and arrogant. He sometimes gets under the skin of the opposition. The Australians would be the first to complain. The Australians under Steve Waugh had perfected the art of sledging to upset their opponents. They would mercilessly sledge opposite teams and players. India had in the past always been seen as a soft team which would never retaliate. Everything changed under Ganguly. In perhaps one of the most acrimonious test series ever witnessed India under Ganguly retaliated in kind. While sledging remains an ugly component of cricket, the ground reality is that it exists and not enough laws exist to control it. Ganguly's take is that every team does it, so why shouldn't we? Its a lame excuse to give but to be fair to him the one effect it seems to have had on the team is that it is now less affected by sledging.

How will the world finally remember Ganguly?

He still has perhaps 2 years to go before he finally hangs up his boots. Will the world remember him as the enigmatic captain of India who transformed the team into one of the top teams in the world or will it remember him as the arrogant abrasive captain who was just blessed with good players? Will the world remember him as the genius of offside play or as the batsman who was undone by the short ball on his body? These are questions that only time will answer.

However, one thing is certain.

 The world will know that Indian cricket before and after Ganguly wore markedly different looks. Some like it before, others after. However, results wise everyone will have to agree that the after has been much better than before.

 Kudos to you, Sourav Ganguly --- the most successful cricketing captain India ever produced !

There is no debate over the very fact that   Sourav has rechristened Indian cricket in last five years—2000 to 2005. Indians have never had a captain who has looked at the opposition in the eye and forced them on the backfoot even before a ball is bowled. Azhar, Sachin, Srikkanth, Kapil and Gavaskar did not have the sort of aggression which Sourav does!

As a player and a captain he has given a new looked Men-in-Blue, a blend of youth and experience. This team proved its merit as it raced to the finals of the World Cup 2003.

 

He has never shied away from responsibilities and always stood up for his boys. Perhaps for the first time Indian cricket got a captain who rose above petty parochial regionalism and fought with BCCI to select the best talents available in the country. Few promising youngsters like Juvraj , harvajan , Pathan , Dhoni or player like Sehwag – all are mentored during the tenure of Sourav.

 

Even as a captain, his batting average is better (58.12) than the average (54.14) when he was a non captain. It clearly manifests the very fact that he is always a big tournament player and big challenge motivates him immensely.

He literally brandised indian cricket with the help of his Men -in -Blue