Sourav Ganguly

Sourav Ganguly – Kolkata Knight Riders’ main man?

There can’t have been many sentences written about Sourav Ganguly more damning than this one by ‘Cricinfo staff’:

“This is not the end of the road for Ganguly because he remains Kolkata’s brand image.”

You’ll always have that, Sourav. You’ll always have your skills as a ‘brand ambassador’.

Sourav Ganguly – Test captain and ODI opening batsman

Sourav Ganguly retires after this Test match and a lot of Indians will be incredibly upset to see him go.

In other parts of the world, it might not be quite so apparent why he’s so popular. After all, he averages 42.17 in Tests, which is only ‘very decent’ by today’s standards, plus he says things like this about team mates: (more…)

Sourav Ganguly taking his bat in

No-one ever slinks out the back door, do they? They give you four Tests’ notice so that they can be lauded to the high heavens for a month.

Some players don’t even get four Tests in their careers, but now there are retirement articles about players who’ve still got that many to play. A lot can happen in eight innings.

We’ll probably do something on old Sourav before he retires, but in the meantime, here’s a thought. Did all of Sourav Ganguly’s best innings take place when he had that weaselly spiv moustache?

Sourav Ganguly’s double hundred

Well, at least his highest Test score’s higher than his highest one-day international score now. We saw his highest score in one-day internationals, 183 against Sri Lanka in the 1999 World Cup, and there are similarities with yesterday’s knock.

On both occasions Ganguly was largely overshadowed by his batting partner in a large partnership, before cashing in once his teammate had been dismissed. It was Yuvraj yesterday and it was Rahul Dravid in the World Cup.

Both Ganguly and Dravid had been sublime against Sri Lanka, but if you’d had to have picked a man of the match after 45 overs of India’s innings, when the game was all but decided, you’d have gone for Dravid, who’d looked a mite better and had scored a few more runs than Ganguly at the time of his dismissal.

However, Dravid’s departure seemed to be Ganguly’s cue to start launching the ball into the stands – he hit seven sixes in that innings.

If it sounds like we’re saying that Ganguly’s the kind of batsman who takes advantage of already-decimated bowling attacks, then we are to a degree, but we like that. We like sportsmen to have a bit of mercilessness about them.

Why should Sourav Ganguly take his foot off the pedal just because Sri Lanka’s bowlers are looking ragged or because Pakistan are down to three bowlers who don’t look international standard? Sod it. Hit a few more boundaries. It’s anything but Ganguly’s problem.

Sourav Ganguly looking really quite pissed off

While wearing a stupid hat.

No joke. We just really like this picture.

Don’t make eye contact, Sourav. Write something dismissive as well. That’ll show him. Bloody kids with their unquestioning devotion.