Time for Ganguly to prove a point at home

The pressure will be as much on Sourav Ganguly as his team when they face the Deccan Chargers at the Eden Gardens on All Fools’ Day, reports Atreyo Mukhopadhyay.

The pressure will be as much on Sourav Ganguly as his team when they face the Deccan Chargers at the Eden Gardens on All Fools’ Day. The skipper of the beleaguered Knight Riders hasn’t done anything of note as opener ever since he has tried himself out in that role barring a solitary exception and his team is not far behind as far as performance is concerned.

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It has not gone unnoticed and team co-owner Shah Rukh Khan has already twitted that he is sick with the string of defeats and the excuses offered thereafter.

The Knights and the Chargers are equal on points with the visitors having played a game less and there is still some way to go in this marathon tournament.

The concern for the Knights, however, is the fact that their skipper isn’t firing.

Ganguly is adamant that he would open, the aspects of being unable to rotate the strike and playing too many dot balls in the first six overs going unnoticed. It is hurting the team big way, but he refuses to understand it and continues to waste deliveries in the period when the fielding restrictions are on. The reason is unknown but a shrewd reader of the game like Ganguly is rigid about it in a form of the game that is about flexibility.

There isn’t much time for them to sort it out and their second half of the tournament begins on Thursday.

All eyes including those of the critics will be on Ganguly when the umpires call play at the Eden Gardens on Thursday. He has a proud record of proving people wrong when the chips are down. But that is restricted largely to the other formats of the game where things don’t happen so fast.

This is Twenty20 with minimal room for error and no time to correct them.

It’s Ganguly’s turn to prove a point again.