Parthiv Patel picks Sourav Ganguly over MS Dhoni as the most impactful Indian captain

Parthiv Patel, the veteran Indian cricketer, reckons that Sourav Ganguly made a greater contribution to Indian cricket than MS Dhoni. Back in 2002, Parthiv made his debut for India as a teenager against England with Ganguly as his captain. Though he played for India in quite a few games, after Dhoni’s surge at the highest level, he found it tough to break into the national team.

The 35-year-old Patel said that Dhoni might have won India a number of trophies, but it was Ganguly, who bailed India out after the match-fixing scandal. Dhoni, on the other hand, led the national team from the 2007 T20 World Cup in South Africa. In 2014, he gave up Test captaincy after which in 2017, he passed the baton to Virat Kohli in ODIs and T20Is as well.

Sourav Ganguly built a team that won abroad, says Parthiv

“The competition is valid between the two captains. One captain has a lot of trophies while the other captain has built the team. When Sourav Ganguly became the captain after 2000, Indian cricket was going through a difficult time,” Parthiv was quoted as saying in Star Sports show Cricket Connected.

Patel was of the opinion that Ganguly infused the belief in the team that it could win abroad. “From there he built a team that won abroad, not that we are not winning earlier, but we won big Test matches abroad like Headingly, in Australia and then went to Pakistan and won the Test series,” he stated.

Parthiv was a part of the Indian squad in the 2003 World Cup in the African continent. But he didn’t get to play a single game. About the mega event, the Gujarat cricketer lauded Ganguly for taking the team through to the final where they lost to Australia at the Wanderers in Johannesburg.

“If you talk about the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, no one was thinking that the Indian team will reach the final. In my opinion, if I have to cast my vote it would be for Dada because he built a team from scratch,” Ganguly added.

In his career, Parthiv has played 25 Tests, 38 ODIs and a couple of T20Is where he scored 1,706 runs with 10 half-centuries. He last played competitive cricket in the 2019-20 edition of the Ranji Trophy.