What's the story?
Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly made surprising revelations during a Bengali chat show. The relationship between Ganguly and former India coach and cricketer, Ravi Shastri, has deteriorated recently and it seems like their relationship is not going to be mended anytime soon going by Ganguly’s recent comments.
A few weeks ago, when Mahendra Singh Dhoni stepped down from captaincy in the limited overs format, Shastri was asked to name his best captains of the Indian cricket team and interestingly, Sourav Ganguly’s name did not feature on his list, in spite of being one of the most successful Indian skippers. During the chat show, Ganguly was asked the reason for his omission from Shastri’s list and he humorously replied that Shastri did not follow cricket when he was leading the side.
Extra Cover: Ravi Shastri excludes Sourav Ganguly from list of best Indian captains
The southpaw was also asked to compare Ravi Shastri and Anil Kumble on a scale of 1-10 for which the former India captain gave Shastri a rating of 7 out of 10 while the current Indian coach was given 9 out of 10.
In case you didn’t know…
Sourav Ganguly was awarded the captaincy in 2000 when Indian cricket was in the doldrums but he helped in the turnaround of Indian cricket and led the team to many memorable victories. Under him, India won Test matches abroad on a regular basis and even led the Indian team to the final of the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup.
The heart of the matter
The series of events started during the coach selection process last year. A three-member advisory committee comprising of Sourav Ganguly, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman was responsible for selecting the coach of the Indian cricket team, Ravi Shastri being one of the contenders for the post.
Ganguly was absent for one of the meetings which hurt Shastri who felt it was very disrespectful towards him.
Extra Cover: Ravi Shastri takes a sly dig at Sourav Ganguly
The Kolkata-born ex-cricketer slammed Shastri by saying that he was very surprised and saddened by his comments. Anil Kumble was eventually given the job, ahead of India’s tour to the West Indies. Under Kumble, India has been phenomenal, winning each and every Test series so far and have beaten the likes of West Indies, New Zealand, England and Bangladesh.
Parallels from history
Mohammad Azharuddin, who featured in Ravi Shastri’s list of captains was quite furious about Sourav Ganguly’s omission and even slammed the former cricketer. “It was such a stupid thing to say. Can’t he see statistics? It doesn’t matter to me what he thinks of people but when Shastri refers to great Indian captains, his personal bias shouldn’t be used to insult those who have contributed more to Indian cricket,” said Azharuddin during an interview with the Hindustan Times.
Sportskeeda’s Take
Ravi Shastri and Sourav Ganguly have had glorious careers and contributed to Indian cricket immensely and are two of the most respected cricket personalities in our country, and it is sad that there is so much mud-slinging going on between the two.
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