Sourav Ganguly is, perhaps, the most controversial cricketer that India has ever produced. And what makes him controversial? Thats a question which is really not difficult to answer. He fights for his team more often than than he does for himself! In return, the nation (or a large part of it) greets him back with a flurry of hate remarks and shrouds him in a cloud of controversies because his attitude prevents him from being confined to the domains of accepted traditional stereotypes. Fairness, then, has no meaning at all.
The Indian cricket team had, over the years, built up a reputation of being a team without character, cohesiveness or aggression! There were dual standards in the cricketing fraternity, and we were always at the receiving end. The first person to really change that and make a statement was none other than our very own "Dada". He took charge at a time when the Indian team was in tatters. Marred by match fixing scandals and plagued by an aging pool of selfish players, there was, in fact, no "Team India"! It took enormous self confidence and guts, just to take accountability of a national team under such impossible conditions. Yet, this man did, and did it bloody well. Right from infusing young blood into the team to believing and backing the novel talent despite initial jitters, he gave shape to a unified team that played to win! He gave shape to "Team India".
Its a shame that some of us fail to acknowledge his contributions; contributions that are intangible and not superficially visible, but contributions that were about to change the face of Indian cricket forever! The man deserves more!
Records and record-makers deserve credit, but what good is a record if it fails to achieve the ultimate objective of winning. Individual performances are meaningless unless judged in context of their impact on a game.
The one 'mantra' that we all need to be aware of is that the team is greater and any individual. The earlier we accept this, the better!
