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Saurav Ganguly, popularly known as Prince of Kolkata, Dada (big brother), or Maharaj (King), or Bengal Tiger, has played the last day of international cricket today. With this one golden era came to an end. Some people will remember him as the best captain of the cricketing history, and some people know him in the form of Trouble Shooter for Team India.

Saurav Ganguly Leading the Country for Last Time

One thing is for sure, he was a giant. The ability of Dada to come out from the difficult situations in life and in cricket ground was superb. Even the critics of Ganguly will appreciate this. So many times his critics asked for his resign, but he played some brilliant knock to make them silent.

Controversy and Dada both were moving on the same track early from his inclusion in the team for the first time in 1992. That time Dada was selected for Australia’s tour, but people called it as the influence of the Jagmohan Dalmiya, the then president of Board of Cricket Control in India BCCI. There too he became the part of a controversy and he was removed from the team. The reason behind this was his inability to act as a twelfth player in the team.

People some time says that he got the captaincy (which was unfortunately the same day 10th November when he retired too) due to the influence of Jagmohan Dalmiya only. But Ganguly always made his critics silent by his bat. The best part of Bengal Tiger was that he was a by born leader, and a fighter.

With time the spirit of Ganguly became a bit down and that too because of his removal from the team due to the influence of Greig Chappel. Due to frustration he decided to quit the International cricket. Some people claim that he made this decision due to the threat given by some anti-social events to his daughter. We all know that Dada loves his daughter more than his life. Dada was aware that retirement was inevitable. In his career he played 113 test matches and made 7212 runs with 16 hundreds with an average of 42.17 runs. His career best was of 239 runs. During tests he got 32 wickets too. In ODI’s he played 311 matches and made 11363 runs, with 22 centuries. He also took 100 wickets too in ODI’s.

Any ways the terrific career which starts from Lords ends in Nagpur. The career which starts from a great century ends at a Golden Duck, though with a superb win over the World Champions.

Tags: BCCI, Bengal Tiger, Captain, Dada, Dalmiya, Ganguly, Greig Chappel, India, Jagmohan Dalmiya, Maharaj, Prince of Kolkata, Saurav Ganguly

If you’re new here, and interested in the latest news and insights on news from India and world, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting I News India.

One more senior player left the team at a time when team was facing criticism from all side. Anil Kumble, popularly known as Jumbo, the number one wicket tacker for Indian team in cricket history and number three till today, has announced the retirement from test cricket with immediate effect. He is not going to play in the fourth test match between India and Australia in Nagpur.

Kumble and Saurav Ganguly

In his absense Mahender Singh Dhoni, the ODI skipper of Team India will lead the team. The desicion of retirement came as a shock to the lovers of Kumble. He was facing criticism from all side due to his lack of performance in the on going Border Gavaskar Trophy.

Saurav Ganguly, one more former Indian skipper and great south-paw batsman has already announced his retirement from the cricket. Nagpur test is going to be his last appearence. The desicion of Kumble’s retirement was once again due to the pressure created by some sections of media on these senior players. It is true that new people are coming ahead with good performance, but still the way in which these senior players are forced to announce retirement is not good.

Dada, and then Kumble, both were served Indian team from last 15-20 years. There contribution to the team’s present status can never be justified by a few bad performances. But some section of media never allowed them to settle down. I am really feeling bad about the way in which these giants are saying bye to international cricket.

In his career, Kumble played in 132 test matches while he took 619 test wickets. He led the country in 14 test matches. He was behind Muralitharan (756) and Shane Warne (708), in case of number of test wickets is concerned.

Tags: Anil, Anil Kumble, Australia, Dada, Dhoni, Ganguly, India, Indian Skipper, Kumble, MS Dhoni, ODI, Saurav Ganguly, Skipper, Team India, Test Team

As we all know that Team India won in the second cricket test match in Border-Gavaskar trophy. They defeated Australia the number 1 team in test cricket by a huge margin of 320 runs. We are here by preparing a list of seven lime lights of the test match.

1. 12K runs by Sachin: The master blaster of Indian cricket, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar made 88 runs in the first inning of India and he became the highest run getter in the history of test cricket. Also check the 10 glorifying moments of his career! He crossed the land mark made by Brian Lara of West Indies. At the end of the match he has more than 12,000 runs in his bag.


Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly

2. 7K runs by Ganguly: He was once considered as the best captain of India. A bit of politics in cricket and Greig Chappel caused him his place in the team. Finally he get the place in the team but became so frustrated that he decided to quit the cricket after this series. And in this series his bat is talking with all those people who were criticizing him earlier. He made a superb century in the first inning and due to that he made more than 7000 runs in test cricket. It was not a small feet, but still he decided not to revert back his decision of quitting cricket. I News India salutes the “Dada”, we always supported him during his bad phase too.


Maya of Dhoni and a different Bhajji

3. Maya of Dhoni: He is the guy who has changed the form of Indian cricket, he brought it from the aged person to the younger ones. Under his captaincy India won the T 20 world cup one year back and after that whichever match he captained gave India something to cheer about. He is a bit lucky too, considered by a huge section in India. We still remember the match against South Africa in this year, in which he got the captaincy due to the sickness of the regular skipper Anil Kumble and India won that match. Even today India won the match in which he was the captain. This is the Maya of Dhoni. The two attacking half centuries are superb and those gave him the Man of the Match.


The best Indian opening pair of Viru and Gauti

4. Opening pair of India: Viru and Gauti, the opening pair of India is these days considered as the best ever opening pair for India. These two have played lots of cricket together and they love to play together. In One Days too they are being considered as the best and now in test too. The 182 runs stand between these two in the second inning of this test was really brilliant, while the pitch was offering help to the bowlers. Sehwag though failed to convert 90 into 100, but Gambhir get the second test century of his life.


Superb Ishant Sharma

5. Superb Ishant Sharma: This school guy has troubled one of the best batsman of the world, Rickey Ponting. He made the hat-trick of dismissing him in test cricket. He is doing the same thing which Bhajji did in the previous tours of Australia in India. Since his debut in the national team from the January of this year he is continuously creating problem for Rickey Ponting. During this match he dismissed Ponting in both the innings and that caused problem to Aussies, while they are also facing the failure of Mathew Hayden in the series.
6. A different looking Bhajji: We still remember the slap controversy in IPL 2008. That incident has changed our main bowler Harbhajan Singh. He is looking more polite and attacking on the field after that. Yesterday he dismissed the top three batsman on Aussies and that caused them the match. He was not so much successful in the drawn first test match, while he devastated the Aussies second inning. The fall of the batsman like Hayden, Katich and Hussey caused them the match. Now he is one short to the 300 test wickets.


Amit Mishra a good beginning

7. Amazing Amit Mishra: He was not in news before this match and he performed brilliantly in the match. He took 5 wickets in the very first inning of his life and that is also against the number 1 team of world. That was superb, and awesome. Indian team management will have to face a bit more problem now in choosing the playing 11. Whom will they remove, Kumble, Mishra or Bhajji?

It was a team effort and other than these guys Zaheer Khan too did well, along with good contribution from all the players of the team, especially Rahul Dravid. So overall it was a all OK match for team India and now they are looking ahead to defeat Aussies in the series. Best of luck to team India. We would be happy to see the comments of our readers on this match. Also you can take a look at the Cricket Updates for the match reports.

Tags: Amit Mishra, Bhajji, Border Gavaskar Trophy, Captain of India, Dada, Dhoni, Dravid, Gambhir, Ganguly, Gautam, Gautam Gambhir, Gauti, Greig Chappel, Harbhajan Singh, Hayden, Hussey, India Australia, Ishant Sharma, Katich, Kumble, M S Dhoni, Ponting, Rahul Dravid, Rickey Ponting, Sachin, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Second Cricket Test, Sehwag, T 20, T-20 World Champions, Team India, Tendulkar, Test Match, Virender Sehwag, Viru, Zaheer Khan

Yesterday I was going through one Hindi Daily News paper and I found one article on the Australia tour of India. The story was that Greig Chappel was warning Team India about the performance of the skipper of the Aussies squad, Mr. Rickey Ponting, who has a worst record in India. He made only 172 runs in 8 matches with a mere average of 12.28, while batting in India.

So the Guru Greig Chappel is warning the team India from the anger which he has seen in the eyes of Rickey Ponting. The worst part which I felt is his statement that if Rickey is going to bat according to my tactics then he is going to score some big innings in India.

This is the Team India which for the first time give the title of Guru to this batsman from Australia, the regard which we gave him is more than which he deserves, as far as my views are concerned. It is Saurav Ganguly who first gave the challenge to Greig Chappel and then our Indian team management sidelined Ganguly from Indian team. It was a shame that we did not supported our own skipper, who was still considered as the best skipper of Team India, rather we supported some one who tried to break the Indian team.

After that incident it was a huge distance Team India has covered, meanwhile Team India won the T 20 World Cup, and defeated Australia in Australia in the tri-nation ODI series. India lost to the test series to Aussies in Australia. So now every body is looking forward to the test series of four tests between India and Australia, which is beginning at Bangalore on 9th of October.

Let’s discuss about the performance of Suarav Ganguly. Once he was neglected by the Indian team management and then he fight back. He created one example of a strong comeback in the history of Indian team. It was unfortunate that he did not perform well in the recently concluded test series against Sri Lanka in Lanka, but in the same series all the senior cricketer failed to perform according to their reputation. So I think the blame should not be given on his shoulder only.

He was recently ignored by the selection panel in the Irani Trophy and in the camp which is going on in Bangalore. It was really unfortunate, since I think that he is the only guy in the Indian team which can give reply to the aggression of the Aussies which they do on field as well as off field too.

So I think that it is not fair to keep him away from the team for the test series against Aussies. They are not a smaller team; they can do any thing to win. So we should give one more chance to these people who have shown his aggression in the past. In my views if team has decided to drop Ganguly then why not drop Sachin and Kumble too, because they too did not performed well in the test series against Lanka. If performance was the key to drop any one then why Yuvraj Singh is in the ODI team, while he was not doing any thing good in the middle?

As far as the selection is concerned today is the first meeting of the Indian team selection panel, which is now a paid unit and I know the pressure is mounting on them to choose the best possible team. Let’s see whom they are going to chose for the series. If Dada is not picked for the series, then I think it will be the end of his career unless he once again made the history in his own manner.

Tags: Chappel, Dravid, Ganguly, Greig Chappel, Ponting, Rahul Dravid, Rickey Ponting, Sachin, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Team India, Yuvraj Singh

The cricket icon, Sachin Tendulakar who have been a brand ambassador of soft drinks major Pepsi since 90s, was dropped by the company. The decision came on the backdrop of Pepsi axing the other two members of the Indian batting troika - Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly - earlier this year.

“The decision was also influenced in a big way by the premium amount demanded by the batting maestro,” the sources added.

The Pepsi contract with Sachin, who is earning Rs 3-4 crore from Pepsi every year through promotions and ads, was expired in May.

A company source said that he had not “got back” to a request to “lower his price” for renewing his contract, which expired around two months back.

Pepsi had made it clear its intention to go with youngsters as part of a new campaign for 2008, ‘Yeh hai Youngistaan Meri Jaan; and roped in Ishant Sharma and Rohit Sharma while dropping Dravid and Ganguly.

Other insiders said the Master Blaster had asked for a “huge” hike. “We went back to the drawing board to see if it made more sense to put money on young cricketers who fit into our Youngistan campaign than shell out a huge sum for someone like Sachin,” the source said.

Tags: Cricket, Dravid, Ganguly, Pepsi, Rahul Dravid, Sachin, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Youngistan

Former Indian Cricket captain Saurav Ganguly is honored with Asian Cricketer and Asian batsman for his magnificent return to team India at the Castrol Asian Cricket award in Karachi on Friday. Sahin Tendulakar bagged best ODI batsman award while the same award is fetched by Gautam Gambhir for T-20.

Ganguly has had a series of successful innings since his return to the Indian cricket team during the South African tour of 2006-07. Ganguly’s wife Dona took the awards on his behalf as he was not there in the ceremony.

“I am proud and happy to be his wife. I don’t think he needed to work so hard to prove himself. But he had a point to prove and when he wants to achieve something he does it. So these awards make me really proud of him as my husband,” Dona told reporters after receiving the awards.

She, however, refused to term the awards as redemption for her husband after his removal as captain and being dropped from the team in 2006.

“I don’t see it that way. I just knew that he would achieve what he wanted. He is an introvert sort of person but my job was to be there to encourage and support him. As a family we were there for him always,” she said.

Ganguly was also delighted to get the award and expressed his happiness on receiving the awards in a video taped message.

Sri Lankan Wicket Keeper Batsman Kumar Sangakkara is selected for best test batsman award while Farveez Maharoof from Sri Lanka again begged the Best ODI Bowler. Pakistan’s Umar Gul was named the Best Twenty20 Bowler.

While Sri Lankan spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan took away the Best Bowler award, the Indian cricketer Yuvraj Singh was given a special award for hitting six sixes in the Twenty20 World Cup against England.

The most surprising element was the Best Fielder award to Pakistan wicket-keeper Kamran Akmal, who has been dropped from the Asia Cup squad because of his poor form.

But former Pakistan pacer Wasim Akram, who along with Sri Lankan batsman Sanath Jayasuriya and former India skipper Rahul Dravid picked the winners, said that Akmal was selected for his overall performances throughout the last two years.

Akram said that Asian cricket had produced some great performers from Hanif Mohammad to Tendulkar and it was good to see them being recognised for their achievements in a systematic manner.

Pakistan greats like Hanif Mohammad, Zaheer Abbas, Asif Iqbal and Wasim Bari graced the ceremony that was hosted by Akram and Rameez Raja with all the teams, including associate member Hong Kong, in attendance.

Hanif Mohammad got a lifetime achievement award and said, “it was time for other companies and people to also come forward and recognize and reward the players.”

Tags: Asian Cricket, Asian Cricket Award, Castrol, Castrol Asian Cricket award, Gambhir, Ganguly, Gautam Gambhir, Indian Cricketers, Sachin, Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly

Former Indian captain Saurav Ganguly after snatching the ‘Man of the Match’ in Kanpur test against South Africa is back in the top 20 players of ICC test batsman list. He is now 17th in the ICC Rankings which made him the fifth Indian in the top 20 list.

Ganguly scored 87 and 13 not out in the first and second inning respectively against South Africa in the Kanpur Test which helped him to ride 7 places and resched at 17th rank of ICC batsman list.

Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and VVS Laxman are the other Indian batsmen in the top 20 players of the list. Tendulkar, who missed the last two Tests through injury, has dropped one place to 13th position while Dravid lies in 14th place, gaining one spot. Laxman, who scored 50 in Kanpur, stays at his earlier rank of 19th.

Sehwag who became India’s top ranked player on 12th position after hitting a triple century of 319 runs in Chennai, came down to 15th. Mahendra Singh Dhoni has climbed four places to reach 39th position.

South African captain Greame Smith who scored 69 and 35 at Kanpur test raises two places to reach 12th rank while Jacques Kallis slide three places to fifth position.

AB de Villiers falls five places to 26th spot while Ashwell Prince, Hashim Amla and Neil McKenzie have held steady in 23rd, 28th and 33rd positions respectively.

Sehwag may have slipped in batting rankings but he has climbed eight places in the bowling list and now sits in 51st position, two places ahead of Ishant Sharma, who took five wickets in his only appearance in the series in Kanpur.

Anil Kumble who missed the Kanpur test because of his groin injury remain India’s highest ranked bowler at position 7 despite of dropping one slot followed by Zaheer at 14th rank, the second highest ranked India’s bowler.

Off-spinner Harbhajan Singh, who won the player-of-the-series award for his 19 wickets, raised one place to 19th position, where just 13 ratings points separates him from 13th placed Andrew Flint off of England.

Tags: Ganguly, Saurav, Saurav Ganguly, Test Ranking