Music stops for Ganguly? | Your say

The music stopped and I stood still,And found myself outside the hill,Left alone against my will,To go now limping as before,And never hear of that country more! - The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert BrowningNew Delhi: Former skipper Sourav Ganguly has once again failed to make it to the Indian team.

India's most successful skipper has been out of the team after the Zimbabwe tour last year where he had a dramatic and high-voltage confrontation with coach Greg Chappell.

A full year has gone by and Ganguly has just played two Tests matches for Team India. And with the team management looking to the future, even his die-hard fans might think it is all over for Ganguly.

However, Ganguly is still optimistic of making a comeback.

"Well I don’t know. I will not be able to say I will, because the World Cup is just a tournament. It’s hyped, because it’s the World Cup. There is cricket after that. There is loads of cricket after that. And I’d still be 34. If I keep on performing, I’ll still keep my fingers crossed," Ganguly had told CNN-IBN just a few days back.

Even age is not on his side yet Ganguly would like all to believe that he has it in him to make it to team once again.

"I don’t think so at this stage that it has come to an end because I’m just 33-34, and there are loads of players of that age who are playing around the country, with probably the same performances as I have, and even probably less. If you look at it this way, if you do a fair assessment, I don’t think so. But as you’ve said that I would have to put up performances in the domestic circuit," he had said.

His recent form, too, does not inspire confidence as during his county stint in England this summer he averaged just 4.8 runs.

He even left the former Board of Control for Cricket in India president Jagmohan Dalmiya's camp in order to come into the good books of the new BCCI regime.

And Ganguly was rewarded for changing his loyalty when the selectors unexpectedly named 30 probables for the Champions Trophy that included him.

However, that was not enough to make it to the final squad.

PAGE_BREAK

Ganguly has scored 10,123 runs from 279 ODIs at an average of 40.65 after making his debut against the West Indies in 1992 and his records justify his status as one of the greatest Indian batsmen.

Yet his debut was nothing to remember about and he was soon dropped from the squad.

Not many gave him much chance when he made his Test debut against England at Lord's in 1996. But a classy century in his debut Test cemented his place in Team India.

Later the same year, he was asked to open the innings in One-Dayers with Sachin Tendulkar and together they formed one of the most destructive opening pairs in cricket history.

He was appointed the skipper of Team India in trying circumstances with the ghost of match-fixing looming large.

Tendulkar had declined to take charge and it was the natural aggression of Ganguly that took the team to the new heights.

Stars of the current team like Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag have made no secret of the fact that they miss Ganguly in the dressing room.

The Bengal southpaw led India to win in Tests abroad and stopped the Australian juggernaut with the famous come-form-behind win in Kolkata Test in 2001.

The then coach John Wright, too, vouches for the fact that it was Ganguly's aggression that galvanised the youngsters in the team and instilled a killer instinct in them.

And against all odds India reached the World Cup final in 2003 for the first time in 20 years and even won its first ever series against arch-rivals Pakistan the following year.

But the slide started soon after as his bat lost the magic and the team started to lose regularly.

Only the future can tell if Ganguly will ever play for Team India again but an image that will always come to mind when one thinks of the Ganguly legacy is that of the Lord's balcony when he took off his shirt to mock at Andrew Flintoff who had bared his chest after an England win in Mumbai.

However, for his horde of fans he will always be the God of off side with those silken cover drives.