For me Ganguly is an average captain, but became more famous because of removing shirt, making steve waugh wait etc, so he was more of a glamorous captain than best captain, and to his luck he had backing of Dalmiya off the field, while on the field he probably had the best group of players India had ever seen, tendulkar, dravid, laxman, sehwag, kumble, harbhajan, zaheer,these people together wrote history, and ganguly took credit. In fact dravid was instrumental in our famous away wins. Due to this, though he was not fit to be in the playing 11 continued to play for some time with poor form and later had to be forced out. In a typical controversial manner, he made his dropping also a political issue, and made a big hungama.
Re: average captain
by sasikumar on Sep 05, 2012 04:05 PM
Hope you know only know about politics, not cricket. who forget to mention the other politics, both Dravid & Tendulkar deliberately flopping in all the Finals under Ganguly's captancy. Hope you are zero in Cricketing knowledge.
Re: Re: average captain
by Janardhana on Sep 05, 2012 04:12 PM
DRavid never played politics, it was because of him ganguly has a fantastic record in test. Look at his average in away test matches. He played selflessly including opening innings. Regarding flopppin in finals, we lost finals of WC in 2003 mainly because of poor captaincy and poor bowling, it was impossible to chase 360 and anyway dravid was not a great one day player to chase that much. I think your cricketing knowledge is nothing and looks like blind follower of ganguly, other wise you would have recollected, WC 2003 was lost due to poor bowling and ofcourse some great batting from Aussies
Re: Re: Re: average captain
by Brat on Sep 05, 2012 04:33 PM
Dravid was a Star, no doubt about it. So was Tendulkar, Laxman, Kumble, Sewhag. Raising stars were Yuvaraj and Harbhajan. You have any idea what it means to manage and motivate all these superstars - with their egos, pride, status and all that. Man management is the work of the Captain and not becoming the best allrounder or playing for rest 10 players. You must realize we are talking of Captaincy and not being another Tendulkar or Dravid or Laxman. How many match saving innings did Laxman play after Ganguly was shown the doors? Think....
Re: Re: Re: Re: average captain
by Janardhana on Sep 05, 2012 04:46 PM
I don't think managing these players was a big problem, Dhoni is also doing it very well especially when these stars have become bigger stars during his time, but with declining performanance, with bruised egos. Morever, dravid, laxman and kumble were great team players, dravid was probably instrumental in ganguly's victories. On the contrary managing heavy headed ganguly when he was not captain was a big problem for other captains. He played real politics which entered even into parliment.
Re: Re: average captain
by Janardhana on Sep 05, 2012 04:42 PM
also, please note, it was ganguli's politics which resulted in India loosing to bangladesh in 2007 WC. There were rumours that Ganguly took money to play maximum number of balls at the expense of scoring rate. He wanted to teach a lesson to chappell and succeded at the cost of team.
Re: average captain
by Brat on Sep 05, 2012 04:09 PM
Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Kumble, harbhajan and zaheer were there before Ganguly was captain and they remained when Ganguly was removed from captaincy. Then why were is there in the win rate percentage. Don't forget the circumstance under which Ganguly took captaincy. I am sure you are right that Dravid was instrumental in many or most away wins. But that is how it is - "A captain is as good as his team"
Re: Re: average captain
by Janardhana on Sep 05, 2012 04:50 PM
Performance of Indianteam was good even after ganguly was removed from captaincy, in fact, it was better with 17 consecutive one day victories including victories at pakistan, but then ganguly was brought back, he played politics, we did badly in WC. Also after ganguly was removed, we had memorable test series wins in england and west Indies, and then we continued good performances till 2010 when we were No.1 and then finally age caught up with stars and we lost badly.
Re: Re: average captain
by Janardhana on Sep 05, 2012 04:47 PM
when you can't defend, this is the way you answer. I hope you know everything about captaincy.
Re: Re: average captain
by Pankaj Garg on Sep 05, 2012 05:09 PM
Janardhana...if you don't know about cricket and captaincy then just keep quiet. The players you mentioned Ganguly brought, Sehwag, harbhajan, zaheer, yuvraj into the team. So more than half the team was built by him which important beacuse always there are 2-3 places in the team which remain weak. But he removed those weak links. then he was bold as captain. thats why he is best captain. Look at dhoni's choice of player Jadeja, Ashwin, Raina, sharma (fast bowler). They are all average players, thats why team is suffering.
Ganguly did not promote players at the cost of teams interest.
this guy is a rogue. he will promote players just because they share good relations with him. never heard of such things under dada. this guy will field raina like 2020 players in test cricket.
Re: Difference
by Brat on Sep 05, 2012 04:14 PM
Yuvaraj, Harbhajan and Zaheer was backed and promoted by Ganguly. They were a sort of "Ganguly fans". Remember Harbhajan did show his resentment when Ganguly was kicked out of the team. Not a easy thing against the powerful BCCI
ganguly created the new dynamic aggressive team with killer instict, that was missing before. he brought major transition in the team. also stats show that ganguly had equal success abroad also.
dhoni has failed miserably outside, and never before india lost 8 consecutive tests in a row. then how can you compare dhoni to ganguly.
Three great Indian captains are Pataudi, Ganguly and Dhoni. Pataudi’s biggest disadvantage was that he captained a weak team. During Pataudi’s time, Indian team was much weaker. He became captain in 62 i.e. 15 years after independence, when Indians used to suffer from an inferiority complex against the white skinned people. Pataudi’s advantage was that he hailed from a rich khandani family with lot of background and was educated in the UK. That gave him lot of courage and guts which enabled him to treat white skinned people on equal terms. Ganguly definitely had all the requisites of a good captain and the right family back ground. In addition he belonged to the present generation of Indians who has started considering themselves as superior to white skinned people. Ganguly successfully imbibed this spirit amongst the boys under him and that spirit clicked tremendously. In addition, unlike Pataudi, he inherited a much more strong team. His another achievement was his capacity to spot talent and that had helped many players like Shehwag, Juvraj, Harbhajan, Kaif and many others in general and India in particular. Dhoni is also a capable captain and leader of men who inherited a good team and the good work carried out by Ganguly. He surely has got the right personality, cricketing brain, leadership qualities and India will continue to do well under him. Where Ganguly scores above others is imbibing the spirit amongst the boys that they can beat any team includi
To my mind, Ganguli happens to be best Test Captain we had so far. He built up the morale of the Indian team and won matches for India in India and abroad. There was a time before that when Indians were laggards.
Dhoni continued the goods work for which he had the best teams. Now that the stalwarts have retired and he is leading a young Indian time, his ability as a good test captain will be tested when Indians visit abroad and confront the best teams in the world. It is too premature to give the mantle of the Best Test Captain on Dhoni.
Re: Ganguli v/s Dhoni
by aftab on Sep 05, 2012 03:52 PM
Any comparison between Ganguly & Dhoni is meaningless. Ganguly was a class and Dhoni is a mint.
Ganguly would have given a befitting farewell to the great grandson of our Presesident RadhKrishnan. I am talking about VVS Laxman.
For Dhoni, it is money that matters and he hardly bothers about values. At the same time this is also a fact that Dhoni has helped his old time friends of Ranchi and helped them financially so that they settle down.
