Sourav Ganguly: A life of Cricket and Controversy
Well, I think that the title of the entry took you by surprise. I do not blame you. If you look at the career of Sourav Ganguly then you can see that it is a life full of controversy. Sourav Ganguly comes from West Bengal and West Bengal was not traditionally a strong place for cricket. Still, to the people of West Bengal, football is the no. 1 and most popular sports. Thus, it was breaking a tradition for Ganguly and at first, he had to struggle a lot to get chance in the team. Many said that Sourav Ganguly got a chance in the Indian team because someone had to be selected from the East zone. Many others fingered their point at the influence of Dalmia who was an influential figure that time. It is said that it was mainly because of Dalmia, Sourav Ganguly could count to this far in world cricket. Sourav Ganguly was made Captain when Tendulkar failed to drive India to success. So, all the time, there was a shadow of Tendulkar and Tendulkar was considered to be better players than Ganguly all the time by the board officials, media and fans too. So, it was a big pressure to handle and Ganguly handled it very well. He had no problem to guide team India to unprecedented success in the history of Indian cricket. Well, this success created many fans and many enemies too. When Dalmia lost in the power battle of BCCI, then it was clear that Ganguly would suffer too. In fact, Ganguly suffered a lot when Dalmia lost his influence in the board. Ganguly got engaged in a very bitter dispute with Indian coach Greg Chappell. Greg Chappell declared a silent crusade to destroy the career of Ganguly and some BCCI officials joined with him and for one year, the most successful captain of Indian team was out of Indian squad.
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I am just happy that despite all the controversies, Ganguly never lost his dedication for cricket. He was a professional player from his beginning of playing international cricket and he has remained so until the end. Many a times, he batted very successfully for India and he is among the very few players who have got more than 10 thousands run, 100 wickets and 100 catches in ODI cricket. This is a real feat in cricket. So, I think that Sourav Ganguly was a successful cricketer who just fell into negative controversy for most of the career.
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