Why Do So Many People Hate Ganguly?

While I am finally getting pissed off with Saurav Ganguly's nightmare batting form, Iam also intrigued by the level of his unpopularity in the Indian media and among Indiancricket fans. I have never seen an Indian captain who has just won a Test series (and thattoo against Australia, and after being one Test down) being so unpopular. Why do so manypeople hate Ganguly? Why does hardly anyone give him some credit for the Test series win?And we all know who they would have pilloried if India had lost the Test series, right?

The Indian captain seems to have totally mismanaged his relationship with the media(except for the Bengali media, but then almost every Bengali sports editor has written aGanguly biography), so you hardly see a kind word for him anywhere. Now Sunil Gavaskar hasspoken up in his column and taken a seat in Ganguly's corner, but the overwhelmingmajority of writers seems to be baying for his blood. People like Bishen Singh Bedi havealready said that India won the series in spite of Ganguly, and that he should be sacked.The average Indian believes what he reads in his newspaper and trusts the opinionsexpressed by so-called experts, so they have also turned against the man.

The Australian media is of course in cahoots with the Aussie team and print all sortsof stuff that is untrue, for instance, that Ganguly argued with Cammie Smith and Waughabout the result of the toss for the third ODI (whereas he only asked which side was headand which tails, and if you see a Rs 2 coin, you will instantly know why he was confused),and the Indian media faithfully reports every canard that the Aussies float. When Ganguly,accused of being habitually late for the toss, turned up ten minutes early yesterday inVizag, the accusation was that he was not in cricketing clothes! This is laughable. I haveseen captains going out for the toss dozens of times in shorts and no one ever objected. Iam sure Saurav made Waugh wait deliberately in the previous tosses. But what's wrong withit? Two can surely play at Steve Waugh's famous game of "mental disintegration"?If McGrath can bowl to Ganguly then walk up to him and ask him sneeringly: "How'sNagma?" surely Ganguly has every right to give it back to them in whichever way hecan?

The fact is that this is a team which has two players who have admitted their linkswith bookies and have been let off with light fines. Does anyone in the Australian cricketestablishment have any right at all to talk about rights and wrongs? Yet, sadly, there'ssomething wrong with our colonised Indian psyches that we tend to blindly trust the whiteman's opinion. We like to tell our friends: "Even Ian Chappell feels that blah blahblah." We hardly ever consider the possibility that what Chappell says is part of theAustralian strategy to put more pressure on the Indian captain and team.

The trouble is even the Board of Cricket Control and the selectors don't have much lovelost for Ganguly. Saurav has always dealt with these men aggressively, publicly sayingthat he wants A,B and C in the team, that he wants this sort of pitch and not that sort.He fights vociferously in team selection meetings with Chandu Borde and Co, and insiststhat the selectors have no right to decide on matters like batting order. So these wilymen have taken to leaking stuff on Ganguly to the press. For example, the fight he hadwith Borde over which wicketkeeper should play in the third Test: Mongia or Dighe. Andthese men are so smart that they even put a twist to the planted story: they let it beknown that Ganguly was fighting for Mongia, which is the opposite of the truth! But then,the Board and the selectors have rarely been friends of Indian cricket!

But Ganguly has also gone and complicated his life beyond all reasonable levels bymoving around with Nagma and forgetting how to bat. Anyone who saw him strugglinghorrendously in the fourth ODI would know that this is not just a matter of poor form. Hescored 9 off 36 deliveries, chasing a target with an asking rate of near 7, totallyflummoxed and getting increasingly desperate, taking wild heaves and missing and making afool of himself. His dismissal was euthanasia. Everyone goes through these bad patches(remember Mohinder Amarnath at the peak of his powers suddenly scoring four or five zeroesin a row), but Ganguly's woes seem to run deeper. In all 11 innings that he has played inthis series (Tests, one-dayers and one first class match), Australia has used the sametactic against him, without even the slightest variation. They just pack the off-sidefield (in fact seven men on the offside and a laughable two on the onside) and bowl to himon or outside the off-stump. Ganguly dutifully keeps playing offside strokes, all of whichare blocked off by fielders, and finally gets frustrated and gets out. If the same tactichas worked against you for 11 consecutive innings (in the Calcutta Test second innings, hescored a very patchy 48, that's all), you obviously have a very large hole in yourarmoury. Which is fine, most batsmen have their weak points. But when you can't correct itin 11 innings, you have a real big problem on your hands.

On an English tour to the West Indies in the late 70s or early 80s, Boycott was beatenby the first five balls that Michael Holding bowled to him and was caught behind off thesixth. In the evening, Boycott got a journalist to acquire the tape of the day's play, andcame down to his room to watch it. He watched the six deliveries and then said: "OK,thanks, I've seen what I need to," and went away, and scored a chanceless century inthe second innings. Ganguly simply has to doggedly practice sending deliveries that cometo him on the off stump or outside away to the legside, where there are only two fielders!All he has to do is get the Indian bowlers to bowl to him at the nets only on the offsideand practice tapping or flicking the ball away to the leg. Is the problem he is facingsomething to do with Ganguly not being a natural left hander (he is a right hander ineverything he does in life except batting; he became a left hander because he startedplaying cricket imitating his elder brother Snehashis, who was a left hander)? Is itsomething to do with his stance, which is very side-on (with his butt pointing tosomewhere between square leg and mid-wicket as he waits for the ball)? Is it something todo with the way he holds the bat? Possibly all three, but surely the latter two problemscan be worked out, and that will nullify the first one?

Theoretically, batsmen like Dravid should be so much easier to bottle up because hecarries this burden of correct technique and playing every ball according to its meritetc. In fact, Dravid did have that problem a few times in his career (the latest being anapparent weakness against Shane Warne during the 1999-2000 Australia tour) but he hasalways managed to overcome those problems and come back a better and more effectivebatsman in both versions of the game. Surely, Ganguly, with his intelligence and force ofwill can sort this out. Indeed, it is amazing that the man who scored more runs thananyone else last year, including nine centuries, has not figured out the solution already.I hope he does so in the last match in the series coming up in Goa in a few days, becauseit's ridiculous to see a man with 16 one-day centuries under his belt playing to a fieldwith only two men smirking at him in that expanse from deep fine leg to long on, and notbeing able to score.

But the point I want to make is that even if Ganguly fails with the bat even in Goa,and India loses the match and the ODI series, there is no case at all for taking thecaptaincy away from him. As a strategist, he is perhaps the best captain India has hadsince Krishnamachary Srikkanth. And the fact that he is also the most unpopular Indiancricketer since Ravi Shastri should not be a factor at all. (Now that was a cricketer tobe admired. Not much talent, but Shastri who built a long and successful career throughsheer hard work and brains. Booed constantly by his own crowds, but never letting itaffect his game. And totally fearless.)

From all accounts, Ganguly is not a very likable man. But who ever said that a leaderhas to be liked by his rival captain and team? The captain is out there to win matches,not to be liked. Bradman was not a very charming person either. Perhaps the greatestcaptain in the last decade has been Arjuna Ranatunga who took a ragtag bunch of cricketerswith low self-esteem and made them world champions. And everyone knows the sort of hatredhe used to evoke in rival teams, especially Australia. Even if we lose the ODI series,what is clear is that Ganguly has managed to create a mean fighting unit out of the Indianteam. You see it in Harbhajan, you see it in Zaheer, you see it in all these men. Theseguys are willing to play hardball, which is the way it should be. International cricket istoday a high-testosterone game, and nice guys do invariably finish last.

A few months ago we were complaining that the Australians sledge and we are too meek.Now that the Indians give the Australians the taste of their own medicine, we say we arebeing schoolboyish and unsportsmanlike. I am no supporter of sledging, but I see a newaggression and fighting spirit in this Indian team which looks very good. I think Ganguly,if he is allowed to continue, can maybe do what Arjuna Ranatunga did for the Sri Lankanteam. Ranatunga managed to revolutionise Sri Lankan cricket by standing up to theAustralians and sneering right back at them. Steve Waugh's World Cup 1996 Diary goesapoplectic every few pages about the Sri Lankan captain, and the perceptive reader canmake out that Waugh's anger is sheer impotence, for that plump dark man was simply moreaggressive and smarter than the Aussies. And beat them too in the World Cup final. Withease and contempt.

I would even say that if Ganguly is given free rein, we could be looking at a 2003World Cup win for India. He has all those Ranatunga-esque characteristics: wile, flexiblesporting ethics, confidence, determination and a pathological hatred for any sort ofdefeat. Now if only he would get his batting in order...