An eventful half-century: Ganguly, at 50, goes down memory lane

Hours before cutting his 50th birthday cake at his residence in London, Ganguly calls it ‘an eventful half-century’.

Cricket and statistics have a symbiotic relationship. Runs and wickets are a cricketer’s lifeblood. Sourav Ganguly loved his numbers. Now the president of BCCI, he still does, 14 years after calling it quits from international cricket. He achieved a milestone moment in his life journey on Friday — completing a half century. In those fifty years, twelve of them were playing for India, more than a quarter of those leading India, during which he made Steve Waugh wait for tosses, celebrated bare-chested on the Lord’s balcony. Above all, he gave Indian cricket steel and belief that they could win overseas.

Sourav Ganguly(Getty)

Hours before cutting his 50th birthday cake at his residence in London, Ganguly calls it ‘an eventful half-century’.

Twenty-six years back, it was in the same city at the hallowed Lord’s turf that Ganguly announced his arrival to world cricket with a hundred on Test debut.

“You obviously don’t choose the ground that you debut in. It’s a coincidence that it happened at a special ground. But, when I scored, it felt great. It just changes you,” he said. “ I had butterflies, excitement. There was the happiness of playing for India for the first time. All of those things.”

His first Test outing was also a comeback of sorts, having had a false start as a 19-year-old in limited-overs cricket in Australia. “I just wanted to score runs and play long for India. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s your career. Your profession. And you want to do well.”

After that England series, critics and non-believers took a back seat and Ganguly would go on to lead the national team at a critical juncture when Indian cricket was hit by the match-fixing scandal. It was a star-studded team, including the presence of Sachin Tendulkar.

“We had grown up together. It wasn’t difficult to lead Sachin,” he said. “There were some great players in that dressing room. We all complemented each other. The way Sachin batted, it pushed us all to get better. All of us who played in that era with him—Rahul, VVS, Yuvi, Viru, he was an example to emulate. It lifted our own batting quality and the team’s level.”

With Tendulkar, Ganguly would go on to forge one of the most successful ODI opening partnerships of their times.

Ganguly’s team would come of age in 2001 when they stalled the mighty Steve Waugh-led Australia’s victory march of 16 consecutive Test wins. It probably wouldn’t happen again — the 376-run partnership following on, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid batting all day at Ganguly’s home ground Eden Gardens and young Harbhajan Singh taking a hat-trick as India pummeled Australia into submission.

“That win changed Indian cricket. It changed the team. It gave the team confidence that we could win anywhere and everywhere. I think that was the turning point for our team,” said Ganguly.

"In some ways, it was a freak game,” he added. Like India’s recent loss at Edgbaston where England chased down 378? “Yeah, absolutely. I don’t know how India lost that game,” he replied.

Building a trusted band of young achievers who turned into match winners from Harbhajan and Yuvraj Singh to Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag, the Ganguly-led Indian team for a four-year span earned the reputation of being a team that could win Test matches overseas. “One thing I believed in was continuity. It was important to give those players a fair exposure. That’s the only way they could get better,” he said.

Ganguly’s career would meet a serious roadblock during the Chappell era. But he returned with a bang in South Africa in 2006, having done ‘mujhe bhule to nahi’ advertisements during his days away from national reckoning. “It gave me great satisfaction. It made me very confident. It was a comeback series. It also made the team believe that I can score runs again at that level against a good attack,” he said.

Another big name to have debuted during the Ganguly era was MS Dhoni. When Ganguly was playing his final Test match at Nagpur, Dhoni handed the captaincy armband to Dada one final time. “I was very happy. I was honoured. MS is a very good character. He is strong and honest. That’s why he led the country so well. It was quite emotional for me,” he said.

Calling the 2003 World Cup final loss at Johannesburg the only regret of his career, Ganguly picks his playing days as the best days of his life, having turned a broadcaster, briefly a coach and now an administrator.