Sourav Ganguly explains the reason behind his retirement decision

Former Indian captain, Sourav Ganguly spoke at length about the reasons behind his retirement from Test cricket back in 2008. Speaking at the India Today Conclave East, 2017, Ganguly opened up about his altercations with coach, Greg Chappell back in the day. The 45-year-old also lauded Virat Kohli for the way he values MS Dhoni.

While Ganguly had reached scintillating highs in his career becoming one of the country’s most successful Test captains, he also had his share of abysmal lows. The infamous feud between him and Chappell had led to the former’s axing in January 2006. He made a comeback 11 months later and played some of his best knocks before hanging up his boots in 2008.

Ganguly had grown tired of selection drama

Speaking about how he’d grown tired of oscillating between getting selected and axed, Sourav Ganguly said, “I retired because at some point you’ve had enough. The reason is not because you have had enough of playing the sport but because you’ve had enough of getting selected all the time. Dropped/selected that’s part and parcel of sport.”

“All top sportspersons in the world you look at, Diego Maradona could have played more when he retired; Rahul Dravid retired in 2011, that year he got three or four hundreds. In sport you have to make way for someone else,” he added.

Ganguly went on to comment on the Greg Chappell fiasco by saying, “The Greg Chappell incident was an eye-opener for me. It made me a better person. Before that, from 1995-2006, the graph was only up. I never missed a series, I was captain of India for six years. The world was at my feet till 2006. Not many captains in the world would go from not being captain to not even being in the side.”

He also lauded current Indian captain, Kohli for his warm behaviour towards the former captain, MS Dhoni. “You look at Dhoni. He is not the captain of the team but look at the way Virat Kohli looks after him and they go about their job,” he said.