Birthday Special: Five Big Records Held by Sourav Ganguly
On his 46th birthday, The Quint takes a look at the five records held by Sourav Ganguly.
Sourav Ganguly, fondly referred as the ‘Prince of Kolkata’, was handed his maiden call-up to the Indian team on the 1991-92 tour of Australia. He was handed his India debut in the B&H World Series ODI against West Indies at Brisbane on 11 January 1992. But after a painful and unconvincing 13-ball 3 in his debut ODI, he was banished back to grind of domestic cricket.
The left-hander received a second lease of life when he was named in the Indian squad for the tour of England in 1996. And he grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Sourav Ganguly – who celebrates his 46th birthday today – announced himself in splendid fashion on 22 June 1996.
The left-hander scored a fluent century at the Lord’s Cricket Ground in his first Test match. Courtesy that start, he would go on to become a permanent fixture in Indian teams for the best part of the next eleven years.
By the time he announced his retirement from international cricket in 2008, Ganguly had scored more than 18,000 international runs and had 38 international centuries to his name. Here’s looking back at a few of the key numbers from Dada’s illustrious career:
When Ganguly had played his last ODI on 15 November 2007, he was among the top four run-getters in the limited overs format. Here’s how the list of top run-getters in ODIs stood when Ganguly walked away from ODIs:
India were an extremely competitive force to reckon with, especially in ODIs, and particularly between 1998 and 2005, because they had a very formidable pair at the top.
At the one end was Sachin Tendulkar and at the other end was Sourav Ganguly. Together, the right-left pair decimated many bowling attacks and laid the foundation for several Indian victories in ODIs. To date, the Indian pair is the most successful opening pair in ODIs.
Such was Ganguly’s fluency and domination of the one-day format – particularly in the years between 2000 and 2003, that he set the records for being the quickest to get to the 7000-run mark (174 innings), 8000-run mark (200 innings) and 9000-run mark (228 innings).
Ganguly, who was handed the captaincy after dark days of the match-fixing scandal, invigorated the Indian team and helped play a certain fearless brand of cricket – especially while playing overseas.
Under Ganguly, India won several ODI series – including the famous NatWest Series in England in 2002, and made it to the final of several competitions – including the 2003 Cricket World Cup in South Africa.
(The statistics in this story are from July 2016. This article was first published on 8 July 2016 and is being reposted from The Quint’s archives to mark Sourav Ganguly’s 46th birthday.)
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