Saurav Ganguly: The hype, the stats and a nation's Fixation : Part 1

I have been wanting to write this post for long...During the India-Zimbabwe tour, infact even before when the Indian team was announced. I resisted in jumping the gun. When Ganguly labored his way to a century against the likes of Assam and Tripura and bragged about it, I resisted. I wanted to see how things pan out. Then came the Chappell controversy. and then the email leak and then the faux pas called BCCI hearing, and the new team selection and the first one dayer and the massive win and Sachin comeback and so on and on . So much happened with so much fuss. Here is a 2 part rant...

Firstly what the heck was Sourav Ganguly thiking? A century against Zimbabwe where he was given those 100 odd runs and never scored even one of them, in the process ran out VVS Laxman who was looking very special, stayed there like the oddities of the Robert Mugabe regime and bragging about it. Ganguly at best was an average captain who had an excellent support cast.
Take for instance the Australian tour of 2001 which every Saurav Ganguly supporter brings. It was won by Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman and the Aussie agression to finish India off by asking them to follow-on. Am sure as any one else is that Ganguly neither strategized the great come back innings nor the Aussie decision. The third test was won by Harbhajan Singh.
Here is comparison of Saurav and Laxman and Sachin in that series. Sachin scored 304 runs at 50.66 with a century and 2 50's. Laxman had a very special series with 503 runs at 83.8 with that special 281. Even Ramesh, long forgotten in the scheme of opening musical chairs, had 162 runs while Ganguly had 106 meagre runs across 6 innings.
Walking late to the toss and talking trash can cause excitement but do not create wins as the meagre 106 runs does not.