Indian View
by Amit Varma
Monday, May 6, 2002

Before India's current tour of West Indies, it was widely suggested that India needed a new captain. Well, they have one now. Sourav Ganguly is a man transformed.

He has top-scored for India in his last three innings now. The first of these, in the second innings of the second Test in Trinidad, was a matchwinning 75 not out (remember that India won by just 34 runs). He remained unbeaten at the end as the batting collapsed around him. Then, on a pacy bouncy track in Barbados, he made 48 and 60 not out, the last man out in the first innings, the last man standing in the second. Forty-three per cent of the deliveries he faced here were short-pitched, supposedly his Achilles heel. He survived.

It wasn't quintessential Ganguly. The Ganguly the world knows, who made that spectacular century on debut at Lord's in 1996, was an artist, a creature of flair, whose immaculate timing and magical off-side play evoked comparisons with David Gower. And he did all right for a while, averaging 51 after 30 Tests, and was considered one of India's triumvirate of contemporary greats, along with Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid.

Then his flair deserted him. Deliveries which he would normally caress through cover, he began edging behind, playing away from his body. The breathtaking – and precise – square cut become an uppish slash to gully where, always, a man waited to catch him. And he suddenly had no answer to the ball pitched short. His hooking and pulling was inadequate, his ducking was awkward, never assured, though his fending – a new if unwelcome addition to the armoury – was excellent, and often picked out a fielder.

At the end of England's tour of India in December 2001, Ganguly had passed 50 only twice in his previous 15 Tests, in which he averaged just 26 (and his overall average had slipped to 40), and he seemed to be on his last tottering steps. He kept insisting to the world that it was only a matter of time before the flair would rekindle, and he would be the same Ganguly of old. But there were few believers. He kept his place in the team only because he captained it, and no leader in recent memory, not even Mark Taylor, had experienced such an awful run with the bat.

So did the flair come back in Trinidad and Barbados? No, it did not. But Ganguly showed an entirely new quality which he has never been renowned for: grit. Still out of form, he gutsed it out in the middle, and changed his game entirely to do so. Gone were those flowing drives through cover – only 19% of his runs in Barbados came in the cover region. He played a compact game, did not drive away from his body, did not slash outside off, and had clearly worked out how to handle the short ball. He pulled or cut anything slow enough for that treatment, and ducked or swayed away from the rest – and like the flair, the ungainly fend was gone.

This is a Ganguly no-one knew, one whose existence nobody suspected. And it's a fantastic bonus for India. If he continues showing character in the middle, he will stay at the crease long enough for him to get his confidence back, and then, to get his touch back. Once he regains his form, he will be a far more formidable player than he has been before, because then he'll have both the flair he was born with, and the spine he has developed. And India will have the best of both Gangulys.

No matter what happens in the two Tests that still lie ahead, this Test series might just go down in history as the one in which Sourav Ganguly finally turned the corner.

Amit Varma is assistant editor of Wisden.com in India. Sambit Bal is on holiday.

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