Rewind to 2000, Sachin Tendulkar, hurt by defeats in Australia (team that had Shane Warne and Ricky Ponting) and then at home against South Africa (team that had Jacques Kallis and Allan Donald), decided to quit captaincy. After a long hard thought, the Indian think tank decided to hand over the reins to Sourav Ganguly ahead of Ajay Jadeja. Ganguly went on to resurrect Indian cricket. Almost 16 years on, do we see that repeating?
Tendulkar and captaincy have never made an ideal pair. Neither did he attain much success when he led the national side nor during the Indian Premier League (IPL). Now leading the Sachin’s Blasters, his side was thrashed 3-0 by Warne’s Warriors (which included Warne, Ponting, Donald and Kallis) in the inaugural Cricket All-Stars series 2015. True, the sides were not balanced with Blasters stacked up with ageing players while Shane Warne’s side had more recently retired players, but Tendulkar’s captaincy once again lacked imagination.
A source close to Tendulkar who didn’t wish to be named (not Vinod Kambli, we will come to that later) told the writer, “All-Stars was all about Tendulkar wanting to lead a team to glory and had quality cricketers in his side. He thought bowlers like Glenn McGrath and Curtly Ambrose would make him look a better captain but unfortunately he didn’t realise that the last time when they bowled, Virat Kohli was still in school and hadn’t learned the swear words yet.”
Meanwhile Tendulkar’s childhood friend and former cricketer Vinod Kambli countered view that saying, “Sachin is a decent captain but his choice of players was not good. When your opposition has Kumar Sangakkara, how can you miss the other great left-hander not playing for you?” When the writer reminded that both Brian Lara and Ganguly were playing for Tendulkar, an agitated Kambli fumed, “I am talking of greatest! My Test average is higher than both of them!”
Dada, the successor?
Coming to Tendulkar, our sources within the Blasters team say that a hurt Tendulkar is once again considering quitting captaincy after the dismal show and once again Ganguly may succeed him as most believe that he is the ideal man to take the Blasters forward. With this news making rounds it’s believed that Zaheer Khan has already made a phone call to him while Harbhajan Singh and Yuvraj Singh are already considering retirement. It’s believed that Gautam Gambhir too made a call but Ganguly didn’t receive it, thanks to Manoj Tiwary, who by the way is another candidate as he believes he is a more high profile bench warmer than Sameer Dighe.
With Ganguly in charge there is a possibility of an influx of talented budding retired cricketer. However, one man is upset again. Ajay Jadeja, who is commentating, was overheard talking to Alan Wilkins. “I retired from First-Class after him and he gets to play and I don’t. Once again he may end up being the captain with me just watching. Life isn’t fair.”
However a source close to Ganguly confirmed, “Why will Ganguly accept leading Blasters. The team will have to renamed to Atletico de Ganguly but anyways there maybe BCCI’s conflict of interest that may come in the way too.”
However that may not be the correct reason, the writer believes Ganguly doesn’t want to go through the captaincy pains again as there are only a few streaks of hair left on his scalp and he doesn’t intends to part with them.
Please note this is a humour article — work of pure fiction
(Suvajit Mustafi consumes cricket for lunch, fiction for dinner and munches numerous other snacks throughout the day. Yes, a jack of several trades, all Suvajit dreamt of was being India’s World Cup winning skipper but ended up being a sports writer, author, screenwriter, director, copywriter, graphic designer, sportsmarketer , strategist, entrepreneur, philosopher and traveller. Donning so many hats, it’s cricket which gives him the ultimate high and where he finds solace. He can be followed at @RibsGully and rivu7)
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