Sourav Ganguly played a big part in building the 2011 World Cup-winning Indian team: Manoj Tiwary

Manoj Tiwary, the former Indian cricketer, reckons that Sourav Ganguly made major contributions towards the Men in Blue winning the 2011 World Cup. Tiwary, who has played 12 ODIs and three T20Is, said that most of the players from MS Dhoni’s squad grew up, playing cricket under Ganguly. In fact, even Dhoni broke into the Indian team when Ganguly was the national captain.

Yuvraj Singh, the Player of the Tournament, also made his debut in 2000 with Sourav as the skipper. India won the World Cup after 28 years following Kapil Dev and Co’s triumph way back in 1983 at the Lord’s Cricket Ground.

He gave so much of security to youngsters: Manoj Tiwary

“Sourav Ganguly has played a big part in building that team over a period of time. If you go deeply and see, the players who performed well when we won the World Cup in 2011, all the players started when Sourav Ganguly was leading the country,” Tiwary was quoted as saying in Sportskeeda.

The 34-year-old Tiwary stated that with Ganguly as the captain, the players didn’t have any sense of insecurity. “He gave so much of security to youngsters at that point of time, whether it be Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra or Gautam Gambhir. All that experience worked for us in 2011 under the brilliant captaincy of Dhoni,” he added.

In the final at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Gambhir’s 97 and Dhoni’s unbeaten 91 helped India over the finishing line against Sri Lanka. The entire country erupted in joy after Dhoni deposited Nuwan Kulasekara into the stands over long on. Ravi Shastri’s words from the commentary box still reverberates in the minds of the Indian cricket fans.

Tiwary didn’t forget to laud Ganguly for pulling India out of the pits after the match-fixing scandals in 2000. The Bengal veteran also mentioned that Dhoni carried forward the good work back after which Virat Kohli became the Indian skipper across format from 2017 onwards.

As far as Tiwary’s career is concerned, he hasn’t played for India since 2015. Though he has been a prolific run-scorer in domestic tournaments, chances of him making an India comeback look bleak.