SOURAV GANGULY
Now, we can see India’s famous cricketer Soruav Ganguly is in a new role. This former Indian cricket captain Sourav Ganguly has been signed an agreement with ESPN Star Sports as a commentator for the ICC World Twenty 20, which started on 5th June, 2009 in England. So he will be part of an ESPN STAR Sports commentary panel including Wasim Akram, Sanjay Manjrekar, Alan Wilkins, Harsha Bhogle, Nasser Hussain, David Lloyd, Ian Chappell, Simon Doull, Kepler Wessels, Ian Bishop, Ranil Abeynaike and Athar Ali Khan. He will start his new innings as a commentator with Ian Chappell from the semi final of Twenty 20 World cup and it is the first time that Sourav Ganguly will be seen in the role of a TV analyst.
BIOGRAPHY
Ganguly was born in 1972 in Calcutta as the youngest son of richest business man Chandidas and Nirupa Ganguly. His full name is Sourav Chandidas Ganguly and nick name is Maharaja. He is also famous in various names including ‘Prince of Kolkata’, ‘Dada’ and ‘Bengal Tiger’. He has a brother named Snehasish Chandidas Ganguly,who is also a former Indian first class cricketer. He is married to a classical dancer Dona and they have a daughter. As a young boy, Sourav’s first interest was in football and he played football for his school team for four year.But later he was shifted to cricket and joined a cricket coaching club. He was started his international career at 19 years old during the tour to Australia in 1991-92. Ganguly is an aggressive left-handed batsman and is also an effective medium pace bowler. His one day International debut for India against West Indies in 1992, it was not good for him and he scored only three runs in this match. Ganguly was started his test career in 1996. In the final of the Independence Cup in 1998 against Pakistan, he was scored 124 runs and India successfully scored 315 of 48 overs and he won the man of the match award. In 1999 World cup, he had scored his highest score of 183 runs against Sri Lanka. His partnership of 318 with Rahul Dravid is the highest ever in the World Cup and is the second highest in all ODI cricket. Ganguly was selected the captain of the Indian cricket team in February, 2000. Under his leadership India had won many test matches and his excellent performance lead India to world cup final in 2003. In 2004, Ganguly was dismissed from his captaincy and Rahul Dravid was selected as the captain. In 2007, he was named in the squad for the world cup. He was the leading scorer for India in their first round defeat against Bangladesh. In 2000 to 2005, Ganguly became India’s most successful Test captain. In the year 2007, he had scored 1106 Test runs at an average of 61.44 and become the second highest run-scorer in Test matches of that year after Jacques Kallis. He is the fifth highest run scorer in 2007 in ODIs, where he scored 1240 runs at 44.28. In 2008, he was retired from International Cricket, ending a grateful career spreading nearly 17 years. After that, this all rounder appeared as a player in IPL matches. He is also the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL team owned by the famous Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan. Now we can see this Bengal Tiger in the role of a cricket commentator in coming days.
AWARDS AND HONORS
Ganguly was achieved many awards and honors in his cricket Career. He won the ‘Man of the Series’ award for India in England Test series in 1996, Sri Lanka in India Test series in 1997/98 and Pakistan in India Test series in 2007. He was also won the ‘The Man of the Match Series’ award 7 times in ODI Cricket. Ganguly was gained the ‘Man of the Match’ award 6 times in test cricket and also won the same award 31 times in ODI Cricket. His another achievements are he was made 183 runs against Sri Lanka in World Cup 1999, which, at that time, was the highest ODI Score by an Indian, beating Kapil Dev’s Record of 175 . Ganguly was the ‘Man of the Series’ in the ‘Pepsi Cup’ 1999 for scoring 278 runs and taking 6 wickets in total. Saurav Ganguly has the distinction of being one of the few players in the World to Score a century and take 4 wickets in the same match. He was along with Tendulkar forms the 4th best opening pair in the history of one-day cricket and was scored a century on debut at Lords in 1996, and went on to score a century in the very next match as well. He was named “Sport star Person of the Year 1998″ and also won the “Arjuna Award” in the same year. He is one of the 3 players in the world to achieve amazing total of 10,000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches in ODI cricket history, the others being Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya.
CAREER STATISTICS
Competition Test ODI FC List A
Matches 113 311 242 426
Runs scored 7,212 11,363 14,933 15,278
Batting average 42.17 41.02 43.92 41.51
100s/50s 16/35 22/72 31/85 31/94
Top score 239 183 239 183
Balls bowled 3,117 4,561 10,968 7,949
Wickets 32 100 164 168
Bowling average 52.53 38.49 36.82 38.41
5 wickets in innings 0 2 4 2
10 wickets in match 0 n/a 0 n/a
Best bowling 3/28 5/16 6/46 5/16
Catches/stumpings 71/– 100/– 166/– 129/–