The Bratsman who changed cricket

<div class="section1"><div align="left" style="position:relative; left: -2"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" align="left" border="0" width="34.2%"> <colgroup> <col width="100.0%" /> </colgroup> <tr valign="top"> <td width="100.0%" colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="" valign:="" top="" background-color:="" f3f3f3=""> <div class="Normal" style="" text-align:="" center=""><img src="/photo/1073154.cms" alt="/photo/1073154.cms" border="0" /></div> </td> </tr> <tr valign="top"> <td width="100.0%" colspan="1" rowspan="1" style="" valign:="" top="" background-color:="" f3f3f3=""> <div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="" font-weight:="" bold="">Sourav Ganguly is the most successful Indian captain ever.</span></div> </td> </tr> </table></div> <div class="Normal">Should Sourav go? Defending Ganguly is defending ''guly-danda'', his brand of cricket which refuses to duck first.Brusque, brash, boisterous, it has given Indian sport its lifeline: killer instinct. Guly-danda, as the name suggests, is one man''s genuine attempt to give a new lease of life to a mass sport. <br /><br />Some reckon that Indian cricket lost its virginity when a bare-chested Sourav crazily waved his shirt at Lord''s, as soon as India won the NatWest Trophy in 2002. If anything, Shivaji Park cricket''s nursery lost its soft middle-class ethic when Ganguly crashlanded in our midst. <br /><br />Not only did Sourav succeed Shivaji Park''s darling, Sachin Tendulkar, as skipper, he started drawing the nation''s attention to his dare-devilry. <br /><br />His four hot-feats in pecking order: NatWest win against England in 2002; World Cup 2003, where India finished second; first Test triumph in Pakistan in 2004; and Test victory against Australia in 2001. All of them variously defined a mood called Ganguly. <br /><br />These exploits alone should have sufficed to take him into World Cup 2007 as India''s maverick boss. Each one of them has been punctuated by his gung-ho resilience. In 2003, in what was a pedestrian performance by India against Kenya, he dug in and scooped out a ton in a rare display of timing. <br /><br />It launched India into the World Cup final. Even in the drawn series against Australia in 2003-2004, his 144 in Brisbane was a reflection of the attitude that he has imparted to the game: break the mould. So blatant is that emotion, it shoves his offside elegance into the shadows. <br /><br />True, India will still worship Tiger Pataudi and Kapil Dev for their captaincy, the first for his astuteness and the second for his 1983 triumph. But Ganguly will always be a Bollywood dream come true: the rich boy who jumped out of his sports-ute to rescue cricket from the mean streets. <br /><br />Guly-danda, Indian cricket''s latest chapter, still lies unfinished. By asking for Ganguly''s head, we might still have a shirtless slugfest, but without the chutzpah that personified and electrified it. <br /><br />As an offbeat actor on the cricket stage, Ganguly needs the occasional box-office hit. He has already won 19 Tests, a captaincy record in India. His career batting averages in Tests and ODIs are 40.9 and 41.43, respectively. In 2004, he still averaged 45.33 (Test) and 32.65 (ODI). And, in 2005, his performance shrunk with averages of 9.6 (Test) and 10.3 (ODI). Yet, in India, it''s only the graph of public conviction that really matters. <br /><br />One box-office hit, a knock-out ton, is all Ganguly needs to convince people that his game and leadership are far from over. Team Ganguly has already won two ODIs after their terrible loss against Pakistan in the third Test. <br /><br />Even if memories are short, there''s one that will always endure: Ganguly, like Salman Khan, bratting it out at Lord''s in 2002. It was the Night of the Bratsman. It was the dawn of New Cricket. <br /><br />For those of us that have grown up on Kapil, then Sachin, cricket is the real villain: it prolongs innings. It would be sad if cricket suddenly dumps her true love for a carnal desire called statistic.</div> </div>