Ganguly turns 30 next Tuesday

KOLKATA: There is simply no room for a public figure to keep moments as personal as a birthday to himself. Certainly not, if you are one Sourav Ganguly, who is turning 30 next Tuesday.
While it was customary to celebrate the likes of silver jubilees and golden jubilees before, it was the hype around Little Master Sachin Tendulkar''s 30th birthday last April that got the media on the overdrive.Maharaj, while savouring all the anticipation in the air, is too embarrassed to talk about it.
"Why are you creating such a song and dance about a 30-year-old? It''s time for me to celebrate Sana''s birthdays instead," a cheerful Ganguly told Times News Network on Saturday morning. For the Indian skipper, it was business as usual even on a weekend as he stepped out after a two-hour workout at the new gymnasium of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB).
Asked about his plans on the B-day, Ganguly says: "It feels good to be with the family on occasions as this. I wasn''t around last year but since my wife and daughter were travelling with me in England, we could take time out to cut the cake. There are no major plans, really..."
There will, of course, be a small get-together at his Behala residence on Monday night where some of his close friends will be flying in from Colombo and Dhaka to join the party. Wife Dona, who would play hostess alongwith mom Nirupa, said: "It''ll be a private occasion where some of his old buddies of the city will be invited. Sorry, but there will be no celebrity cricketers."
The Ganguly household is a deeply religious one, where they stick to vegetarian food on Tuesdays as a mark of respect to their household deity. "Hence, it seems that even cutting of the cake will have to put on hold," added Dona lightheartedly. And next morning, he will have to fly to Mumbai for the shoot of a commercial.
However, much as he would have liked it, the Prince of Kolkata''s 30th birthday cannot exactly remain a quiet affair. ESPN-Star Sports, which have signed up Ganguly for a two-year contract, has lined up a series of programmes on various facets of the man which is already on air from July 1.
A local TV channel, Akash Bangla, has gone a step further: they are visiting city schools to collect birthday cards from students which would be handed over to the star that day. "The response has been tremendous and we have already got around 2000 cards lying in our office. Some of the handmade cards are really creative work," said a spokesperson.