Saurav Ganguly, the man who has been responsible for many of India’s triumphs in odi’s is sadly not the one who has led India to victory with his bat in tests except the Kandy test in the emerald island. Ganguly, who is undoubtedly the best left hander in the world in one dayers and one of the most devastating batsman in the contemporary cricket sadly has not deliver the goods for his country in tests. Ganguly’s problem in tests has been the short pitch that has been delivered to him free of cost by all the fast bowlers around the world and sadly for him he has capsized under the pressure each time, no matter whether the bowler is Heath Streak of Zim or Mornantau Hayward of S.Africa. And the most disturbing thing about all this is that Ganguly used to be a good player of the short-pitched stuff during his early days. Remember when he got his first hundred at Lords, which was quite a seaming track, under the likes of Darren Gough, Dominic Cork and co. he played the pull and the hooks quite profitably and at that time his only flaw was his leg side play. And even in S.Africa in 97 he played both the shots remarkably during his two half century knocks in the Jo’burg test under the likes of Donald, Pollock, McMillan and Klusener (remember Klusener used to be a tear away fast bowler at that time of his career).
And now I think Ganguly has got only four innings at the most at his disposal to prove is mettle in the test arena and if he fails to deliver in the coming two tests then don’t be surprised if Ganguly is dropped from the test team and we might see two different captains for one dayers and tests just like what the Australians did to Mark Taylor. Just imagine what a great shame this is for all we Indians when we see our captain hopping and jumping and surrendering arms against short pitch bowling. Sorry, but such impotent test players cannot win you tests abroad, they can only win you tests against very insipid attacks and on a dead senile pitch, as dead as a dodo, as our Navjot Singh Sidhu will say.
But by writing all this I don’t mean to say that Ganguly is not a good captain. As I have written in my early reviews and I m writing it now that he is the most aggressive, capable and talented captain that India has ever produced but you cannot be given a place in the TEST side just on the basis of your captaincy.
So, c’mon skipper u will have to deliver for your country. We have come back from behind in a test series and won it and there is no reason why we cant do it again.