Perfect finish again eludes Dada

By: Subhadeep Bhattacharjee

If critics still doubted the talent the 'Bengal Tiger' Sourav Ganguly had, yesterday's innings against the Rajasthan Royals was an answer for all of them. Nobody expected the match to go down to the wire once Brendon McCullum and Chris Gayle had shown their back. It was the man of steel the former Indian captain Sourav who came good and almost did it for the Knight Riders silencing the Ganguly bashers.

The only sad thing in the story was a perfect finish has once again eluded our beloved Dada. Be it the 2003 World Cup final or the first ball duck in his last Test innings Sourav seems to have been unlucky when it comes to finishing in style. After playing a breathtaking innings and almost scripting an impossible win, Sourav was out in the penultimate ball of the innings giving Royals a chance to win the encounter in a Super Over decider.

A lot of questions are being raised on McCullum's choice to hand over the ball to Sri Lankan Ajantha Mendis. This showed his inexperience in captaincy and the New Zealander's personal understanding of the game. McCullum a good player of pace handed the ball to a spinner. What he forgot was Yusuf Pathan being an Indian can murder spinners. Yusuf hit through the line and finished the game single handedly in the Super Over.

Coming back to Sourav it is sad to see that time and again this man has been targeted by his critics. In spite of scoring more than 18500 runs at the international level his attitude, temperament and skills have been regularly questioned. But the character that he is Sourav has always come out of poor form and silenced them. There has been no cricketer in the Indian history who has come back from the docks time and again and proved his critics wrong.

Who said Sourav Ganguly has forgotten how to hit sixes? Things have changed and Dada is doing it against the pacers now. Did we hear somewhere that he was susceptible to fast bowling? Well true he was not a great puller of the short ball like many in the international stage are but again he was murderous when it came to the spinners especially the left arm ones. Even the great Sachin is never comfortable against left arm spinner, so did we brand him as a player who can't play left arm spin.

The buck has to stop somewhere. If we can't respect our heroes lets not humiliate them.

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