Does Ganguly matter anymore?

Life has a cruel way of catching up with you and demoting you from the lofty heights of the Captain’s seat to obscurity. It can be even worse when the demotion is accentuated by certain factions’ hell bent on not adhering to the cricketing etiquette. A run of low scores doesn’t help the cause either and certainly precipitated the demise of a player once heralded as the saviour of Indian cricket.

Reminders have a purpose. Ganguly’s sole purpose, however, after the ignominious fall from grace was to remind any one who bothered to listen that he is a cricketer of worth and has over 15,000 runs under his belt. Suffice to say that irrespective of what he may be actually worth for all his troubles, these runs will never desert him in the statistician’s almanac. Neither can anyone discount his contributions towards Indian cricket. Even the staunchest anti-Gangulite would find it daunting to claim that Indian cricket team were not beneficiaries of his contributions.

Critics, and there are dime a dozen in every nook and corner of the world, would gripe against the resurrection of someone disbanded to history books and it would appear, on the face of it, that any gesture to tinker with this assumption would be tantamount to serious affray. As night follows day, the selectors seem to have stressed in no uncertain terms that the inevitable cause of happenings has followed its rightful course in eliminating Ganguly from the core.

Ganguly didn’t make things easy for himself. A self imposed exile from media would have aided him a great deal. A failure is always easy to target. The bait wasn’t even operating at full throttle for him to comment on issues best left to speculation than clarification. Some batsmen inflate their standing in society with their tight lips and the ability to make statements with the bat, which is the way professionals ought to conduct themselves. Ganguly, on more occasions than one, fell for the bait far too easily. Media thrives on creating or aiding controversies. Ganguly, wrongly many a time, handed ammunition on a platter to be gormandized and recycled in a way only the media could. Truth or the lack of it assumes a different hue when like minded individuals work towards twisting it to aid their sales. Many a bonus has Ganguly provided unwittingly.

Statistics can be the driving force for a cricketer’s longevity. Ganguly’s dwindling batting performances, interspersed with a good innings every now and then, over a stretch of 3 and a half years should have been dealt with much earlier. The world at large could have been spared such a dismal run of form had it been addressed by the people in the know at that time. Success as a Captain masked inadequacies in Ganguly’s technique. It seemed he wasn't too keen on doing anything about it and neither the coach seemed overtly concerned with any frailties as long as the wins for India stacked up well. Success is measured in results and based on that, India did flourish into a very successful unit under the auspices of Ganguly in comparison to his predecessors. Here we had a team that did not just taste success but was mentally becoming a unit to be reckoned with. Sadly though, success on the overall sphere of targets meant Ganguly’s own batting took a beating.

The vagaries of life mean that issues confined to history do rear their heads every now and then to remind us of the characters, who went a step further than others to make a point, to defy the norms and to tread into unchartered territories. Ganguly had an immense presence about himself to the point of being branded cocky and down right arrogant. More often than not and in order to transcend the parameters of hitherto unknown success, it requires that an individual moulds himself into an obnoxious character. Ganguly played this role to perfection. He got up people’s noses. He irritated the opposition. He never flinched from making his opinions known. It’s easy to go with the flow. It’s always challenging to walk against it whilst maintaining a likeable persona. Very few leaders can be likeable and successful at the same time. From what we have seen so far, Dravid would probably be one of those exceptions.

Why bother with Ganguly anyway? He is history, some may exclaim. Ganguly, as a player, probably does not matter anymore. As a person and the manner in which he was treated, he does stoically gape at us as a sad reminder of the power wielding unaccountable people that failed to follow the tenets of protocol and custom. Conflicting statements by the Chief Selector and the Coach, both influential and powerful in their own right, regarding Ganguly's future meant the onus lay on Ganguly's rightful successor Dravid to resort to some meticulous clarification.

What is paramount amongst his ever dwindling support is whether Ganguly could ever make a comeback? What is probably even more tantamount to the gamut of cricket in India is the way the issue of Ganguly has been handled? No one, not even the most vilified cricketer to ever grace the planet, ought to have been meted out such a treatment by the authorities. Hindsight is a great reminder of how things ought not to have been conducted.

Ganguly, with the way he carried himself and dealt with matters pertaining to Indian cricket, has probably made more enemies than friends along the way. Notwithstanding his penchant for such a skill, one cannot discard his numerous positive contributions down the years especially when it came to moulding a team capable of taking on the best and that refused to be intimidated.

Questions still remain at large that purport to magnify his so-called misdemeanours. Whilst, if proven true, these cannot be forgiven, it would only be the right thing to wait to hear from the horse's mouth before reaching for that whip of judgment. I await Ganguly's autobiography with bated breath.

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