Does it really have to be Sourav Ganguly vs M.S Dhoni ?

It’s a very normal human quality to compare prodigies. You would know this better if you were a macho in your classroom during your young days. More often than not you would be compared to your closest of competitors in every realm of academics. A same thing can be observed in the case of these two great Indian captains who contributed to Indian cricket in their own ways. Let’s take the case of each of these captains separately and then try to find out if their roads merged or just diverged away further from time to time.
Sourav Chandidas Ganguly or more popularly known as Dada to his fans is definitely one of the most pioneering figures of Indian cricket who brought a lot of laurel to India’s cricketing culture. Probably it won’t be wrong to call him the man who set the foundation stone of what today’s Indian Cricket team is all about. However, Dada didn’t have a very smooth cricketing career in the beginning. In an interview with Rituparno Ghosh, Ganguly himself admitted that he never wanted to be a cricketer during his childhood and was a football player instead. His brother SnehasisGanguly encouraged him to play cricket and so he did from class 9th onwards. Well he made his ODI debut against West Indies in 1992 and was soon left out citing his arrogance and refusal to carry drinks for the senior players. The young man toiled hard and was recalled to the side in 1996 while India was touring England where he just played one ODI. But a mid-tour drama between Navjot Singh Sidhu and Mohammad Azzaruddin, then the captain of India earned SouravGanguly a chance in the test team alongside Rahul Dravid. To add to his credit, Dada scored a maiden test century on his debut at Lords and only the third one to do so in the history of cricket. In 2000, Sachin Tendulkar stepped down as India’s captain amidst match fixing charges against players like Ajay Jadeja and Azzaruddin and cited bad health as a cause. Thus, S.C Ganguly was appointed the new captain of the Indian Cricket team. Henceforth, He started repairing India’s reputation and records overseas. He holds the record of maximum overseas test victories by any Indian Captain and the number turns out to be 11. He took India to the finals of ICC Cricket World Cup after 20 years, last being in 1983 led by KapilDev , which was the only world cup India had ever won. Sadly, India turned out to be runner ups. A year before that SouravGanguly had led the Indian team to a famous Natwest Series Victory against England while chasing 326. It was that time while he was hugely criticized because of the shirt twirling event though today it has become one of those iconic symbols of Indian cricket. Ganguly himself said in one of his interviews that he is not very proud of the shirt twirling incident and wonders why he did that. In 2004, India registered their first ODI victory against the Aussies in Australia after 12 years. What we were looking at was a new Team India. A young team India which didn’t depend and move round only on Sachin’s shoulders. It had its own identity. Dada had given us many god talents like Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh and Mahendra Singh Dhoni himself. And that was the beginning of a new era. He was dropped from the squad because of poor form and incessant ego fights with Greg Chappel and lost his captaincy. Though he made his comeback before the 2007 world cup but finally said goodbye to International cricket in 2008 in his last test against Australia. Amidst the crisis he had said a brilliant thing to media and it went like this:
“People will support you,people will criticize you.When you cross that rope everything is about you.”

Stats For SC Ganguly

Then came the reign of Mahendra Singh Dhoni who was introduced to the International cricket by Sourav Ganguly himself. Popularly known as Captain Cool made his ODI debut on 23rd of December, 2004 against Bangladesh. Though he had a bad series there, he came back with strong performances later starting from Pakistan’s tour of India. In his 5th ODI he played a brilliant knock of 148, then the highest score by any Indian wicket keeper in ODIs. Later that year he broke his own record by scoring a blistering 183 against Sri Lanka which is definitely one of his most entertaining knocks. In 2007 he led India in the inaugural T20 world cup in South Africa and India came back as champions. Soon after that he was appointed as India’s ODI captain in Australia’s tour of India soon after the T20 world cup. He never looked back after that. He had stepped to change the face of Indian Cricket. In 2008, India won the CB Series in Australia defeating the Aussies in the finals. He was appointed as India’s full time test captain in 2008 in the last test against Australia replacing injured Anil Kumble. India clinched the final test match thus retaining the Border- Gavaskar trophy. Under his captaincy, India were titled champions of ICC T20 World Cup 2007, Asia Cup in 2010, ICC World Cup in 2011 and the latest edition of Champions Trophy in England. Though his captaincy was under scrutiny after India’s 8-0 defeat in tests by the hands of England and Australia in their homes and a 2-1 et defeat by England in India he managed to pull it back together by handing Australia a 4-0 whitewash this year. While the tests defeats were understandable because of misfiring senior players and inexperienced young guns, suddenly everything has started falling in place after he rebuilt a strong young Indian team with an average age of just 26 right from scratch. To much of his credit he got the gem out of Rohit Sharma, found a way back for erratic Ishant and more than that he discovered the star of Indian bowling line up Bhuvaneshvar Kumar. Not to forget RavindraJadeja , R Ashwin and UmeshYadav who are our future prospects to give new heights to Indian Cricket. Among these he was once again under scanner for his relations with senior players like Virender Shewag and Gautam Gambhir. Sudden retirements of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman from international arena and Sachin’s exit from limited overs cricket have only added fuel to the fire. Dhoni who always believes in a strong team than a few strong individuals probably didn’t go down well with the senior players. But Dhoni has produced results. He is no doubt one of the best finishers of limited overs cricket, the latest display being in Queen’s park Oval where he held his nerves together to enable India lift the Celkon Mobile Tri-Series Trophy, and another silverware in BCCI’s cabinet.

Stats for MS Dhoni

After having a look at the achievements from both the captains its hard for me to believe that Sourav Ganguly and Dhoni are at crossroads. Two very different characters on the field, Dada being an aggressive one whereas the Captain Cool tag for Dhoni says it all. But if Indian Cricket team is reaping the fruits, Ganguly made sure that quality seeds were sown and Dhoni managed to manure and nurture the plant well. As such there is no point comparing both. Simply see a bigger picture starting from 2000 and come down step by step to 2013. You could feel what I am trying to explain here. I am pretty sure when the next captain comes in, most probably Virat Kohli comparisons will still be made but most importantly what has to be ensured is we need to build on the foundation rather that finding cracks in it.