Sourav Chandidas Ganguly - The much needed Volcano for Indian Cricket

Sourav Chandidas Ganguly – The much needed Volcano for Indian Cricket: Sourav Chandidas Ganguly, the Bengal Tiger has been THE revolutionary captain for the Indian team. The former Indian captain cum opening batsman was, indeed a hero, Indian Cricket team deserved and an ecstatic one. In the early days of his career, he formed the most formidable opening pair for the country along with Sachin Tendulkar in the ODIs and this particular opening pair is still regarded as THE BEST opening pair for India and also in world cricket.

He took over India’s captaincy when the cricketing state of the country were stained badly by the ill-effects of match fixing and other such scandals. With a relevantly new and inexperienced Indian squad, Ganguly took India to majestic heights in Cricket and India was regarded a stern and one of the toughest sides to beat due to their spirited attitude, aggression and winning knacks in the game. On the occasion of the birthday of the Former captain and the present member of the BCCI’s advisory committee, here we enlist the 10 Facts one need to know about Sourav Ganguly.

1. Ganguly scored 131 runs on his debut at Lord’s. This marks as still the highest score by any batsman on his debut test at Lord’s. In fact, he scored back to back centuries for India in each of his first two tests in 1996 against England.

2. Sourav Ganguly has scored a total of 16 Test Centuries with a highest of 239 against Pakistan at M. Chinnaswamy stadium, Bangalore in 2007. As a matter of fact, whenever he scored a century in a test, India had never lost the test match.

3. He has scored 22 ODI centuries, the first of which came against Sri Lanka in 1997 when he scored 113. His highest ODI score stands to be 183 against Sri Lanka in 1999 and India has won 18 of the 22 matches whenever Ganguly scored a century for the team.

Also Read – Sourav Ganguly – Top 10 quotes on former India Captain

4. Sourav Ganguly was adjourned as the Sports Star Person of the year in 1998. Also, he won the Arjuna Award in the same year.

5. Sourav has got 4 of his innings in Wisden’s top 100 ODI innings declared by Wisden Cricket. And he has 3 of them in the Top 25. Also, he has 3 innings in the list of Top 5 ODI innings played by Indian batsmen as per Wisden Cricket.

6. Sourav Ganguly won the Award for Cricketing Excellence in the year 2003. He received the Padma Shri award in 2004 which is among the highest civilian award in India. Also, he was the CEAT Cricketer of the year in the year 1999-2000.

7. Sourav Ganguly stood as the highest run scorer in ODIs in the calendar year of 1997, 1999 and 2000 with 1338, 1767 and 1579 runs respectively. In the year 1998, he was the second highest run scorer with 1328 runs. Sachin Tendulkar was the highest run scorer with 1894 runs in that year.

8. Sourav Ganguly stands to be one of the most successful captains of India with 21 test wins in 49 matches followed by 76 ODI wins in 147 matches. Also, as a captain, Sourav Ganguly has won 9 out of 11 matches in the ICC World Cup.

9. The former Indian captain stands to be India’s most successful captain overseas with 11 test wins in 28 matches followed by 58 ODI wins in 111 matches. Sourav had scored 5 centuries in tests as a captain and scored 11 ODI centuries as the skipper.

10. Sourav and Sachin held the record for the highest opening partnership of 208 runs in ODIs. This was broken in the year 2006. Also, Sourav and Dravid scored the first 300+ partnership in an ODI innings. The pair, Sachin and Sourav scored a total of 5799 runs as openers for India which includes 17 century partnerships.