Think you are supporting Ganguly just bcoz ur a fellow Bong.How long u expect to keep a non performer in a team? When you want to comeback all you need is a match winning innings or a superb century say when was the last time he produced either of this?Yes i agree his removal from the side reeks politics but then wat when he himself was playing the samething? Remember Chapell’s letter about VVS Laxman? to this day neither SG nor Laxman have denied that ever happnd!

One for Sardar jokes.

The cricket politics is an independent issue. With or without politics, Saurav Ganguly does not deserve a space in the Indian team today, possibly he didn’t deserve one in 2003 too.

Sportswriters like Dileep Premchandran have been a rabid Ganguly hater for such a long time on Cricinfo, that I am suspicious of his objectivity. He insinuated that India lost at Karachi because the team was forced to play Ganguly, so Dravid had to open thus exposing the rest of the team to their marauding bowlers when he went out cheaply. I recall another Cricinfo writer (couldn’t find the 5th day’s match report on the cricinfo site, so don’t recall who it was)complaining after India lost at Bangalore in 2005 that having an out of form player like Ganguly puts the rest of the team under pressure. Looks like you can never win. Dravid has since opened in one dayers & tests with no Ganguly around, & we have lost, but Cricinfo has been strangely silent.

Unfortunately for Ganguly, we never played too many one dayers immediately after the 2003 World Cup, & the ones we did were against superstar teams like Australia & Pakistan, or away fixtures against Sri Lanka in the Asia Cup & the Nat West Cup in England. None were easy pickings, & after a long layoff after the world cup (we only played a tri series at home with NZ & Aus), we just didn’t get into the groove. And this was the time that England was playing only against weak teams like West Indies & building up their strengths. Also, Ganguly & Tendulkar were out for many matches due to health or suspension, Srinath had retired, Wright was moving out & there was an unsettled air in spite of the great showing in the World Cup. Obviously not a good time for a captain to lose his batting form.

Fortunately, Dravid has come at a better time. He is in good nick, we have been playing weak or weakened teams (SA were without their best one day player Gibbs & spinner Boje, Pakistan was without Afridi & Shoaib Akhtar, England without most of their Ashes contingent) at home, so there has been enough time to experiment & get players back into form. A few months back I would have said that if Sehwag & Kaif play another 30 matches they would hit some kind of form, just by the law of averages. I wish we were so accomodating for Ganguly. But then in Indian cricket (& even Indian life?) it seems that you are spent & over the hill if you cross 30. Youth is king, not just to marketers but to cricket administrators, but as Jayasuria showed last week, age doesn’t have to go quietly into the night. A good team needs both, & if there was one thing that we lacked in West Indies, it was some good old fashioned experience.

Also, for all those who show up Dravid & Tendulkar’s batting average when Ganguly was captain to underscore how they were the ones who won those tests, is there a mathematical formula that converts captaincy into hard numbers? One farsighted bowling change = 30 runs, or winning the toss & electing to field = 100 runs…