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Journalism of Courage
More compliments, even though backhanded, keep pouring in for Sourav Ganguly. They come inform Sunil Gavaskar in Australia, and now even from Angus Fraser, as he writes in The Independent. The most interesting comment of Fraser about the so-called arrogant India captain is “charming, humble and gracious”.
In a long article on what has been termed ’unravelling the Ganguly enigma,’ Fraser tried to look into angles that not many recently have.
Fraser minces no words in saying that while Sourav “may not look comfortable against the best fast bowlers— it would be wrong to write him off as a player only capable of flogging indifferent attacks. He may average only 32.5 against Australia, but Atherton and Alec Stewart, two of England’s recent greats, averaged 29.5 and 30.5, respectively, against Shane Warne, McGrath, Gillespie and Co.”
According to Fraser while John Wright was a conformist, keeping all confrontations out of the headlines, this skipper-coach “rift that could undermine everything that has been achieved in recent times.” A fair warning.
Fraser starts off with a disclaimer, though. “Andrew Flintoff and Greg Chappell are not the first cricketers to take exception to the antics of Sourav Ganguly,” he says, adding “Nor will they be the last”. He talks of Sourav as “arrogant, selfish and aloof, and on a number of occasions he has failed to set the right example to those he leads out on to the field of play”, and then, having said that he also calls him “charming, humble and gracious”.
If this sounds a trifle odd, Fraser has tried to add substance by looking at Sourav “away from the cameras, the microphones and the responsibility of captaining the world’s most cricket-mad country”.
That’s where Fraser finds Sourav “delightful company”. And, whatever Greg Chappell may have felt in his short stay in India, and whatever Andrew Flintoff may think of how “lazy” Sourav is, Fraser feels that “it is these qualities that have enabled him (Sourav) to turn a talented yet direction less group of individuals into a winning team.
During his five years in charge he has put steel into a side that had previously been pushed around and bullied, and unsurprisingly this approach has upset a few people along the way.”
Interestingly, it has been a sort of constructive criticism by Fraser. And Fraser looks back and points right at the heart of the matter, talking of the 2001 India tour by Steve Waugh’s Australia. He talks about how the “ruthless” and “toughest” Test captain got a lesson in arrogance from Sourav when he was made to wait for the toss.
Fraser, puts it in a different light. He talks about how “Ganguly’s behaviour before the start of the game, and his confrontational approach” had taken the “Australians by surprise”.
The big point that Fraser makes is that this is the attitude “along with the relationship he has with his players, that will prevent him from losing any sleep over the recent comments made by… (Flintoff) and …(Chapell).”
Fraser talks of how Sourav, in his first game, had asked Michael Atherton to take his sweater off the ground. Not a teammate thing. Fraser says this too was natural for Sourav’s character.
