Sourav Ganguly is too intelligent, too canny a man not to figure this one out. When he looks back at the most dismal month of his career, he will know what went wrong. On Wednesday he was dropped from the national team, mid-series, to make place for an opener. This is as glaringly a ploy by BCCI’s now ascendant Maharashtra group as was his bizarre inclusion in the Sri Lanka Tests by the Dalmiya lobby in the first place, as an all-rounder. This is where Ganguly, by any reckoning one of cricket’s greatest achievers, lost the script on his days in the field. He, the most successful India captain of all time, he who led always by example, in recent days allowed himself to be led by the agendas of others. His career can by no means be discerned to be over—on merit, Ganguly still has it in him to stage a comeback. But the air is so rancid in the debates he has sparked that only an assessment of his contribution can draw his agitating fans and exultant detractors to reality. Line up all of India’s captains—Kapil Dev, Sunil Gavaskar, Mohammed Azharuddin among them—and Ganguly is pre-eminent. He singularly changed India’s mindset. He gave cricket’s most sporting losers the hunger for victory. In one series—one of the most riveting ever—he showed what he was made of. Even more, as he vanquished that especially potent Australian team in 2001, he set a standard against which he and all his successors will inevitably be measured. He looked the Baggy Greens in the eye, and did not flinch. And in a rollcall of exceptional captains—the Mike Brearleys, Mark Taylors—he was that rare bird: a revolutionary captain who shone so stylishly with the bat and the ball. How is it that today this man is a lightening rod for derision or, alternatively, parochial hysteria? He owes it to himself to dissociate from the mob that’s reducing him to a symbol of Bengali pride. He is a source of pride to all of India. If and when he bids farewell to the field, it must be with dignity. And even thereafter, we expect Ganguly to be intimately involved with the game in other capacities.
