Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Passing of an Enigma...The End of an Era




There are the Maestros,
There are the Dons,
and then
There is Dada !



The prince of Calcutta, The God of the Off-Side, The Royal Bengal Tiger,... ; the epithets for Sourav 'Dada' Ganguly are diverse and numerous. But the writing on the wall is just one...'This really is the last series you are going to see the phenomenon, the master, the persona par excellence, in action on field! He might still oblige Rukh-Rukh Khan in the second edition of IPL.


It has been a rough ride for Sourav all the way along...


The Boy from Behala made his debut in 1992, in the ODI series in Australia but was shockingly given the boot after just one failure(vs WI). He emerged four years later, literally from the ashes and purely on fantastic domestic performances but a smear campaign was started by his back trackers claiming that he was in the team courtesy Jagmohan Dalmiya.



Dada answered by scoring a blazing hundred on (Test) Debut versus England at the famous Lords. Anyone daring to say that this was just a flash in the pan had to wait for only a few more days. Dada followed this with another hundred at Nottingham! A star was born and there was no denying it.

As his career progressed Indian Cricket had regressed under the captaincy of Mohammad Azaruddin and even Sachin could not change it when he took over the reins as Captain and that too twice. Then the match-fixing scandal rocked Indian cricket and India was at it's Nadir!

In such adverse times the board offered the captaincy to Ganguly and the rest as they say is history! The space in this blog falls short to mention all the histrionics, achievements and records of this great man; so i will say this one thing only : India was metamorphosed into a fighting, confident and aggressive unit capable of beating anyone anywhere due to this one man alone!!!

While grace and timing were the hallmarks of Sourav Ganguly's cricket, I am not sure whether this sudden decision to ride into the sunset was true to those qualities. But such is the situation in Indian Cricket. It does not help if you have been the most consistent performer in Tests for over two seasons! You still have to prove yourself constantly. This is what happens when non-cricketing, money and power hungry politicians become the powers-that-be and control the BCCI

I cannot write more because my eyes well-up...but Dada, We always loved you and we always will!

I am of the strong opinion that Sourav will end his career on a high as he is the kind of man who never goes down without a fight! Go Dada Go...Give the aussies and the idiots in BCCI a piece of your mind and score runs by the ton. And even if you do end up scoring a hundred in every match of the series do not look back because you donot deserve to be in this quagmire...u deserve better...BCCI President!

3 comments:

Advait said...

yeahh.... dada rocks.. he was and always will be india's most successful captain.

Ameya H Vaidya said...

Really...Three Cheers to Dada...Hip Hip Hurray

Prasad Vaidya said...

dada rocks