Once again, Dada’s out of his crease

Interestingly, CAB sources revealed that the “two-line letter” has been addressed to the player himself, and not to the CAB president Jagmohan Dalmiya or its joint secretary Saradindu Pal.

The CAB, on its part, was non-committal on the issue. ‘‘I spoke to Sourav last Friday, the day before the Indian team for Pakistan was selected. He told me he’d missed Bengal’s Delhi match, and would also not play the Gujarat match because of unavoidable personal reasons’’, Pal said.

The Surat four-dayer began on December 25.

Pal went on to say that he’d been trying to get across to Ganguly since December 24 (when the Indian team was picked) but hadn’t succeeded. Though Dalmiya refused to comment today, two days back he had explained that Ganguly would missed the Surat tie due to “logistical, and not personal” reasons — which contradicts the version given by Pal today.

Ganguly not playing a Ranji match is essentially a matter of concern for the CAB yet it appears to have agitated the BCCI. It was learnt that More had specifically told the Board officials that he would want the Indian team players to ‘‘engage in domestic matches as much as possible’’ before leaving for Pakistan — but it’s not clear whether this instruction was passed on to Ganguly.

Several of the players in the Pakistan party — Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Zaheer Khan, VVS Laxman — turned out for their respective state sides in the ongoing fifth round of the Ranji Trophy.

After being dropped from the Indian team following the second Test against Sri Lanka in Delhi, Ganguly had the chance to play in two Ranji Trophy matches, against Delhi and Gujarat.

Interestingly, Pal also said that during his last interaction with the former India captain last Friday, Ganguly had stressed that he was looking forward to play in Bengal’s next Ranji Trophy matches — which would be the two home matches against Tamil Nadu and Railways (starting January 3 and 11 respectively).