In Strong memory of The Don
As the world is abuzz with the ICC cricket world cup,one instance of a player who wasn't seen in this world cup strikes my mind. Few people are already missing him & few must be happy that he is not in the team,but certainly no one can take away the achievements & success from him.
As India tied its 2nd ODI match against England in this world cup,I remember about another match between both countries back in 2002.India lost five wickets in a space of 48 runs to eventually loose the match by 16 runs. But its not the match, but another experience the day before it that caught my fancy.
I was there in the airport a day before the match to pick up my dad who was coming from Hyderabad that day. Even though he was in a different flight he got the news about Indian & England players arriving soon in Bhubaneswar. They were supposed to play the second ODI match of the series in Barabati Stadium,Cuttack. So I bought a visitor's ticket & decided to stay back to catch a glimpse of my favorite cricket stars. I stood in the waiting area near the arrivals gate waiting for members of both the teams to come in. I was eagerly waiting there for more than an hour before England players started coming in. As the players like Knight, Hussain, Vaughan, Collingwood, Flintoff , Trescothick came in they were greeted by the officials in a traditional manner & I could see them quite excited with the way they were being treated. As a teenager it made me really happy to see all these international cricket players in a small city like mine.
The crowd that had gathered were anxiously waiting to catch a glimpse of the Indian Players but being a self confessed Tendulkar fan like any other Indian I was thinking that my day would be worth If I could see him. Finally “The God Of cricket”,as we call him came in & waved at people only to walk away shyly towards the team bus that was waiting outside. While I was awestruck by the presence of few of my favorite stars like Shewag, Bhajji, Kumble, Laxman, Srinath suddenly an incident caught my eyes when I could see a small kid around 8 years desperately trying to put his hand forward to shake hands with the players .As I stand little far from the boy I could see most of the players loving all the garlands and bouquets than being bothered to come near the barricade separating players & spectators, who were present near the airport exit. But suddenly I see a player with his trademark smile coming near the boy & gifting him the bouquet .The boy's happiness reached no bounds when he got to shake hands with other players like Dinesh Mongia & Ajit Agarkar as well. But his happiness became short lived when a man in his thirties standing near him snatched the bouquet from him.The boy opposed but his face turned sour as he saw the man mocking at him with wide eyes & a sarcastic smile. When the boy is just about to turn back and walk off looking dejected ,the certain player rushes back to snatch the bouquet from the person with the same force to hand it back to the boy. There were few lines of reprimanding by the player made the guy look helpless & sorry for his behaviour. If you have not guessed his name by now let me say that I am talking about a certain “Sourav Ganguly” fondly reffered as “Dada” or “The Prince of Kolkata”.
As I followed the players towards the parking lot of the airport, I just could not stop smiling thinking about the whole scene. I never really bothered to think about his achievements till now ,but this small incident changed the way I looked at him as a player,a person & an icon. There was absolutely no reason for him even to step back & put things in place when he saw something wrong happening ,but as a matter of fact it showed the actual character of a player & human being like him who has lived his life truly like a prince. As an avid cricket fan I could remember that he is the same guy who made his debut against West Indies in 1992 to be subsequently dropped from the team ,as he was rumored to be saying it as not his job to carry drinks for teammates. But as I test my memory he is also the same guy who made a comeback to the national side by scoring plenty of runs in domestic circuit & not only made a comeback to the national test side but also scored two centuries in consecutive innings on debut . On personal front he could dare to elope with lover & neighbor Dona Ganguly while both the families were against it to show himself as a man of true character. Even later on when media started speculating his so called affair with actress Nagma he stood his ground & remained intact to his character to come out of the storm. I could run through the memory lane thinking about the matches where he took the lusty blows from Shoaib Akhtar in Sharjah to win four consecutive man of the match awards in Sahara Cup against Pakistan & guide the team to decent scores every time, while his team mates struggled against Shoaib's fiery bowling ,the triumph in “Natwest trophy” final against England in 2002 & his much talked about shirtless celebration in Lords balcony and the 158 ball 183 where he hit 17 fours and seven sixes to become the second highest scorer in World Cup history.Even the way he carried the team forward till the final of “ICC knock out trphy” in 2000 scoring two centuries making the highest by an Indian in the tournament or the “Independence Cup” at Dhaka in January 1998, where India successfully chased down 315 off 48 overs and Ganguly won the Man of the Match award ,everything showed courage & guts. Soon the players waved from their team bus windows to head for the hotel. While I look in admiration at this bispected person winking at the boy with the bouquet in his hand.,I thought the smell of the bouquet would fade away slowly & so would the flowers in it in a few days,but the gesture he made by doing all these will definitely be a lifetime memory for the young boy.While I was coming back to my home in my car I definitely felt this guy would take Indian cricket to a stage not achieved by any Indian captain. Even If my father felt that I am all excited about the gifts he has got for me froactually my excitement was thinking about the consistent results he had strarted achieving by building a team using young people around the experienced ,after Sachin Tendulkar had stepped down citing personal reasons. As I could relate to a person like him who is well educated(impeccable English),confident(battle of mind games in press conferences) if sometimes arrogant(by turning up late for the toss) & articulate(by sledging the Australians) captain who gave the Australians a taste of their own medicine ,I started following him for my inspiration.
8 years have passed ever since & my prediction has come true. India reached the world cup final in 2003 after a gap of 20years under Sourav Ganguly. Today's players like Shewag, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Yuvraj who were groomed under him as talented youngsters have gone on to become the pillars of Indian cricket. I see now that Indian cricket has achieved a lot of success abroad & continued their good performance in India also but his life has been equally successful & controversial. While he was dropped from the team in 2005 ,He made a comeback as a player if not as a captain & amassed runs which was only second to Jacques Kallis in 2007 in Test. Finally he retired in 2008 not before scoring a hundred in the penultimate match of the series & more dramatically a duck in the final innings of his international career. But one thing he has never done is that to bend his head in front of politics & pressure as he strongly fought the dominance of Greg Chappel as Indian coach & scrutiny of the BCCI & media to come up with inspirational performances. As his age & fitness overpowers his talent & grit he was not bought by any IPL franchise but would stand for the election of President of CAB. Perhaps a person like him who is courageous & strong enough can motivate the actual players to get selected & groom them to play for India. Because at the end of the day his Personality which made him to be summoned by the referee so many times in his career will come handy as he wont be interested in money & wont care about the politics. India needs these kind of people who have seen & faced it all to handle the administration in order to put everyone & everything back in place from the clutch of corruption,money & politics. As I never thought that day that I will write one of my first drafts about him I hope for better & stronger people like him who can bring in a lot of change in the attitude of co players & the way cricket is viewed in India, Since here it is proved that you have to demand respect in order to gain it just like the way dada(Don/bhai in Hindi) did it.