5 Cricketers whose careers were shortened because of Sourav Ganguly

Sourav Ganguly is arguably one of the best skippers that India have ever produced in its cricketing history. He gave new dimensions to Indian cricket as it touched several new heights during his tenure. He was an exceptional leader, who took the responsibility of 1.6 billion people on his shoulders. The left-handed batsman took the charge in his hands when Team India was under the scanner of match-fixing allegations.

He rescued his team from all the obstacles and backed all the players thoroughly to come up with flying colours. Sourav Ganguly, who was nicknamed as Dada, injected an aggressive approach in the national side. There is no doubt about the fact that the national team certainly saw a big turnaround after the arrival of the ‘Prince of Calcutta’ as skipper.

Many big players like Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, MS Dhoni, made their debut under Dada’s captaincy. They are now rated as the gems of Indian cricket. Even, Dhoni went onto fulfil the wish of every fan by making Team India win their second World Cup back in 2011.

But, there is another picture to the same as some cricketers’ careers were also shortened under his captaincy. Their story might have hit the spotlight if they were given the appropriate number of chances to showcase their talent in the gentlemen’s game.

Let’s go through the players, whose careers were shortened because of Sourav Ganguly:

1. Parthiv Patel

Parthiv Patel, the left-handed wicketkeeper batsmen from Gujarat made his international debut under the captaincy of Sourav Ganguly. He became the youngest player to make international debut at the age of 17 years 153 days against England at Nottingham in 2002. He was a player of short stature, who was expected to walk on the footsteps of Sachin Tendulkar in batting but that was not the case.

Just after three years in 2004, Patel was axed by the selectors from the team ahead of the Test series against Australia. After that, he never got a single opportunity to play until 2008. In the period between 2002 and 2004, Parthiv Patel scored 669 runs in 19 games at an average of 32 in the longer format.

He was quite young when he made his Test debut and Dada should have given him some time to groom. He should have backed the youngster, who was just 17 years but that was not the case. The Indian skipper soon replaced the youngster with Dinesh Karthik. And,it took many years for Patel to mark his return into the national side.