Not afraid of controversy

The retirement of India's former captain Sourav Ganguly will see cricket lose one of its most controversial characters.

For a retirement that will leave Indian cricket in a state of mourning, we will all have to wait a little longer until Sachin Tendulkar deems that he can give no more. But Tendulkar's greatness can be left for the purists to consider. For those of a more political bent, an altogether more intriguing finale took place in Nagpur when Sourav Ganguly brought a colourful Test career to a close.

Tendulkar has been watched for his mastery; Ganguly for a career awash with controversy. No batsman can play 113 Tests over 12 years, and make more than 7,000 Test runs at an average of 42 without knowing a bit about it.

But it was the controversy that forever surrounded Ganguly that made him so enticing.

Ganguly was that rare thing: an upper- class streetfighter. He was an autocrat, not averse to chicanery to protect his power, but grant him the power and he was an avid proclaimant of India's cricketing emergence.

Tendulkar made his point by weight of runs; Ganguly galvanised India in whatever way he chose, a symbol of a brash, emerging economic power. No Indian Test captain has been more successful.

It is a maverick view in England to relish Ganguly. The cricket writer, Michael Henderson, famously dubbed him Lord Snooty and would rarely hear a good word in his favour. To hear Henderson argue in a Jaipur hotel bar with two Indian undergraduates about Ganguly's worth to mankind was to be privileged to enter a surreal world that Tendulkar rarely encouraged. Sachin? Great player, technically supreme. Then, so often, for want of anything more to say, the conversation would turn.

But Ganguly, there was a debate. County cricket was a mystery to him - akin to those half-hour documentaries when Tory MPs would prove their toughness by spending a week on the dole. At Glamorgan, the team coach once parked outside the dressing room at Cardiff and Ganguly waited in vain for a kit man to come and collect his bags. At Lancashire, his superior ways also rankled - he once reached fifty and raised his bat to a deserted home balcony.

Nearly three years have passed since the Australian, Greg Chappell, then India's coach, fell foul of Ganguly's superior politicking. Chappell wanted to break up an ageing Indian team and complained to the Indian board that Ganguly had embarked upon "divide and rule" to save his skin. A tortuous hundred against a weak Zimbabwe attack was the last straw. Ganguly was dropped and stripped of the captaincy and an out- cry followed. Less than a year later, Ganguly had returned and it was Chappell, discredited, who had been removed.

Ganguly had little physical presence. If you did not know him, he could walk into a room almost unnoticed, were it not for his ever-present coterie of Bengali journalists. So it was that his grand gesture at Lord's in 2005, when he took off his shirt and waved it defiantly above his head, in ridicule of a similar gesture by Andrew Flintoff on a tour of India, was barely noticed. How many effigies have been burned during Ganguly's career? So many that he must be the only cricketer who can be measured in his negative effect on global warming. They must have hacked down a forest for Chappell. Others to suffer were a chief Indian selector, Kiran More, his one-time protector, and the former BCCI president, Jagmohan Dalmiya, who to much mirth he claimed had played politics with his career (both were masters at it), and any number of ICC match referees.

But Ganguly, the prince of Bengal, brought pride to an Indian region not famed for its cricketers. His extra- cover drive was a thing of beauty, his lash over gully as crafty as a batsman could get, and his skittishness against the short ball absorbing. He captained India with a vigour and authority that allowed Tendulkar to free himself from virtually unbearable pressure and concentrate on making runs.

He practiced reluctantly. At times, a chair was brought out to the middle for him to rest while others laboured.

His lack of athleticism set no obvious example, and neither did his talents for self-preservation. But a Test hundred at Lord's in 1996 announced his talent and he soon forged with Tendulkar an excellent one-day opening partnership.

When he assumed the Indian captaincy in 2000, a time when match-fixing allegations were eating at India's soul, he proved himself to be a strong, proud, intuitive leader.

India's cricketers, recognising as much, responded to him. He led them to the World Cup final in 2003, stood toe-to-toe with Australia - who cared for him even less than England - and won greatest acclaim by leading India to victory in Pakistan.

He says he could be a coach or an administrator. Ganguly as an Indian representative on the ICC? The age of cricket politics would then truly have arrived.