Raging Controversy

I am producing a mail from a friend of mine R.Karthikeyan with whom I have been having a intense written debate. Needless to say I do not agree to even a single point that he has raised in this essay and also believe that he currently has the attitude of 'I-love-sachin-so-much-that-if-anyone-points-a-finger-to-him-i-will-pull-down-ganguly'. Nevertheless he has taken efforts to write and express his thoughts which I really appreciate. Here's it .....

Just date back to the Australian series to India and you will know who were the guys responsible for the turn of the tide for the Indian team. Up until then,
India was an ordinary team with one extraordinarily talented individual called Tendulkar. Then came the innings of Laxman and Dravid and the rest is history. These guys were there in 1999-00 series of Australia.

Why couldn't they do it then? They kind of did there too, except not as a team. Laxman scored 169 in a lost cause, Tendulkar scored runs in almost every match even against the face of some ridiculous umpiring decisions.

It is just that they started performing as a team. Dravid and Laxman started to put their hand up and have been at the peak of their prowess which happens in every batsman's carreer life cycle. But in India, India has always done well.So what is the reason of the India's overseas performance and especially in Australia and England. It is mainly the starts they got against Australia. Chopra and Sehwag consistently gave India the starts that India did not have in any of the previous tours. Once you have the starts then
Tendulkar,Laxman and Dravid are too good a batsmen to ruin it.So Indians started to have good total on board consistently. Kumble is a very different bowler when you have a good total on board.

With Kumble leading the bowling and Zaheer,Nehra and Agarkar chipping in (Remember these pace bowlers are much better than Kuruvilla and Srinath we had in the past atleast mentally) India started to score a few handsome wins. That is what happened in West Indies,Australia and England. Few batsmen at their peak, good starts and some great individual brillance and some better bowling and ofcourse improved fielding( Credit should go to John Wright for that).

So the turn of the tide for India actually happened with the form of Sehwag at the top, Laxman and Dravid's realization of their true potential and the
already consistent Tendulkar with Ganguly runs scoring here and there. Atleast 3 batsmen started scoring more than 75 runs in a match consistently. Ganguly was just lucky to be the captain during this period.

A captain who has a bunch of brilliant individuals who perform consistently does not become a brilliant captain,just a lucky captain may be.It would be a
ridiculously overstatement to say Ganguly groomed Dravid,Laxman,Tendulkar and Kumble. Sehwag is just a natural talent and the credit should actually go to selectors.That is why I say Ganguly's place in this team should be based on his performance and not because of his captaincy traits.Dravid has shown he
can be a better captain.Just look at Australia.Cricket experts were a little dubious about Australia's success after Steve Waugh.But it is proved after
Ponting's success that a team of brilliant individual talents cannot fail if they had a reasonable captain.Add to the list of India's brilliant talents a couple
more in the form of Balaji and Pathan and there you have it.

Ganguly does not merit the place in the team just for captaining a winning team. Get off the myth and make him perform.Otherwise it ought to be 'Bye Bye Ganguly and Welcome Dravid'.