Ganguly Earns Recall to SA

By ICF Staff
November 30 2006

Sourav Ganguly has been recalled to India's Test team by a selection committee headed up by Vengsarkar over objections from controversial coach Chappell. With Indian batting looking increasingly spineless, Chappell's methods have been discarded as India try to start afresh.

The last time Sourav Ganguly played for India, in the deciding Test of a series in Pakistan, he was the second-best batsman in the team, having scored 40-odd in each innings on a Karachi greentop facing a strong pace attack as much of the rest of Indian batting collapsed.

To the conternation of most cricket followers, he was dropped after that game, which India lost. Most realized that the reasons for the axing had much less to do with cricket than with the politics in which Indian cricket was mired at the time: incoming BCCI chief Sharad Pawar, a sworn enemy of his predecessor Jagmohan Dalmiya, started his term by firing every selector who had voted to select Ganguly, and replaced them with people who were opposed to him! The Indian captain was regarded as being close to Dalmiya.

That Greg Chappell, strongly opposed to Ganguly for his disclosure of divisive tactics by the Machiavellian coach in Zimbabwe, was pushing his own insidious politics did not help, and India's winningest captain was unceremoniously discarded.

Since then, the standard of Indian batting -- once regarded as the strongest in the world -- has fallen precipitously. India was humiliated in the ICC Champions Trophy held in its own backyard, before then in the ODIs in West Indies, a Test series at home against a second-string England, and continues to underperform in the current tour to South Africa.

Chappell has sought to deflect criticism by claiming, among other things, that he is inculcating a "process" which may take 5 or more years to show results. No longer willing to put up with meaningless words, the Indian public, ex-cricketers and even cricket-loving lawmakers start commenting publicly on it.

Sharad Pawar, bizarrely himself an MP and a Cabinet Minister, finally was forced to put aside his anger against Ganguly, and gave Vengsarkar the go-ahead to select the best team possible for the Test portion of the tour. Sourav Ganguly, fresh off a century for Bengal, and after leading his weak team to a shock upset over powerful Punjab in their own Mohali, now finds himself back in the team after a gap of about a year.

There is a mood of optimism in the air as the popular Ganguly prepares to head over to SA to join the team. There is also a fervent hope that India's greatest middle order -- Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and VVS Laxman -- will be able to put the past behind, fire together again and make Indian fans proud.