Was ganguly India's greatest Test captain?

[Khota]

3 hours ago, Prince_ said:

None of of the above Indian captains were that good to be completely honest. All of them r almost nothing infront of the great imran Khan. 

Nobody is anything in front of great Khan. The level of ball tempering was astonishing. Lying and cheating was a cultural thing foe Pakistan team. Now that cheating has stopped you are at your correct rankings. Rankings dont lie.

[Khota]

Ganguly's greatest contribution to the team was that he instilled in the team a sense of self belief that they can beat any team. No other captain did that. No one.

[Lord]

Dravid was the best I saw

[Khota]

5 minutes ago, Lord said:

Dravid was the best I saw

I am a huge Dravid fan but he was biased. He liked his zonal players and Ganguly did not. Shamelessly forcing Binny in team India was wrong on his part. Binny was as useless as they came.

[Lord]

9 minutes ago, Khota said:

I am a huge Dravid fan but he was biased. He liked his zonal players and Ganguly did not. Shamelessly forcing Binny in team India was wrong on his part. Binny was as useless as they came.

Binny never played under him

 

 

[Ankit_sharma03]

2 hours ago, Khota said:

I am a huge Dravid fan but he was biased. He liked his zonal players and Ganguly did not. Shamelessly forcing Binny in team India was wrong on his part. Binny was as useless as they came.

ganguly was biased to

He did keep playing his fav

Rohan gavaskar was one

parthiv patel

 

 

Binny never played under Dravid 

[Cricketics]

No he was not. He was a good captain but some others are equally good if not better or worse. 

 

Anyways, captaincy is overrated. Only good at certain times off the field when captains back a player after few failures. Barring that mostly overrated.

 

[jf1gp_1]

9 hours ago, Trichromatic said:

That happened even during Ganguly's time if you're talking about ODIs. We dominated them in tests. Ganguly was poor ODI captain and we didn't improve much under him.

 

Difference between our 90s team and 2000s team was the set of batsmen we had to perform away and Ganguly had not much contribution towards them. If you look at 90s team, it was full of home track bullies. Batsmen who could average 50 at home but averaged in 20s in most countries. Then once Dravid, Tendulkar and VVS started performing, we had enough batting power to fight in matches away, which meant we could draw games and it appeared that team had fighting spirit. Apart from that I don't much contribution from Ganguly under whom even Zimbabwe gave us tough time.

 

Ganguly led once of the best batting line up in history of test cricket in peak form. Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar and VVS. WIth that kind of line up in form, most captain won't do worse than what Ganguly did. 

 

We tend to give credit to Ganguly for fighting spirit because we saw our batsmen fighting in game, but if you look at matches, like Kolkata 2001 against Aussies, not sure what was Ganguly's contribution towards type of inning which VVS and Dravid played. Nothing at all. We didn't lose in Aus in 2004 and SRT scored 241 and VVS 178 which was just way superior batting and nothing to do with the leader. He did set tone of series in first match though.  However his contribution is overrated. 

A bowling allrounder who would bat lower middle order became one of the greatest opener under ganguly.  Dravid was played as a keeper in ODIs else there was no way he would have survived. VVS became a regular, out of nowhere bhaji was recalled for aussie series. At the end of the day all credit to individual cause ganguly didn't bat or bowl for them but lets credit him for backing the decisions. When it comes to ODIs under him we were joint winners of CT 2002 and we were in WC finals in 03 and another CT were we lost of NZ.

[Khota]

True Binny never played under Dravid but he kept on pushing him. That was the mindset I am talking about.

[Texan]

Nope.

 

If you go by records, Ganguly will look like he is at the top. However, one advantage Ganguly had, which captains in the past lacked was that he had a very stable batting middle order that was good at home as well as away (barring himself of course). Sachin, Dravid played really well during that time and Laxman did well too. Ganguly himself did ok. If not for captaincy, he would have likely been dropped from the team. He also had Srinath, Zaheer and Kumble. Irfan Pathan was also bowling really well then.

 

Overall, from the captains I watched, I felt Dravid was the best captain. The one match that I thought he captained very badly was the Oval Test, where we should have gone for a win, but defensive captaincy from Dravid resulted in a draw.

 

[Rightarmfast]

/\ What an uninformed post I must say. No offence. But no batsmen or bowler starts playing well all of a sudden. You have to build a team, you have to shape up a team. Sachin himself was a great captain, he almost won a series in WI.  But Ganguly was in a different league. He fought for his players and he fought with his players. 

He shaped up the careers of almost all the fast bowlers. He shaped up bowlers like Harbhajan singh. It was only under him that team India realized you win test matches with bowlers. 

He changed the belief of players, he changed the whole psyche. So today when you see a virat kohli giving it back to the opposition, dont forget the helpless face of a premier Indian fast bowler bowling quick and hitting ponting on the face, and then saying sorry, and then being abused left right and centre! Thats what Indian team used to be. Do you know that Allan Donald called Rahul Dravid a ' mother*er' and a bastard' in 97 series in South Africa? Do you remember how australians used to run over us with their verbals without us responding? That was Indian team! 

 

Once Ganguly came, all of that changed. Today, world cricket is scared of us. We owe it to Ganguly. He was the real bad ass, just what Indian cricket needed. 

I think you guys were kids so you dont remember. His tactics, his aggression. Heck, in one of the series against Australia, Ganguly made it a point to come late on the ground for toss. and that irked Steve waugh so much that he started getting restless and irritated. Needless to say, it affected his and teams game! 

 

None of the Indian captains were capable of this. And whichever tom dick and harry says Imran Khan, IK was nothing in front of ganguly. Ganguly changed a whole generation and paved a new road for Indian cricket. 

 

The greatness of a player cannot be calculated by stats alone. You need to understand the time the events took place. He did what the need of the hour was, and he did it better than anybody else!

[Texan]

22 minutes ago, Rightarmfast said:

/\ What an uninformed post I must say. No offence. But no batsmen or bowler starts playing well all of a sudden. You have to build a team, you have to shape up a team. Sachin himself was a great captain, he almost won a series in WI.  But Ganguly was in a different league. He fought for his players and he fought with his players. 

He shaped up the careers of almost all the fast bowlers. He shaped up bowlers like Harbhajan singh. It was only under him that team India realized you win test matches with bowlers. 

He changed the belief of players, he changed the whole psyche. So today when you see a virat kohli giving it back to the opposition, dont forget the helpless face of a premier Indian fast bowler bowling quick and hitting ponting on the face, and then saying sorry, and then being abused left right and centre! Thats what Indian team used to be. Do you know that Allan Donald called Rahul Dravid a ' mother*er' and a bastard' in 97 series in South Africa? Do you remember how australians used to run over us with their verbals without us responding? That was Indian team! 

 

Once Ganguly came, all of that changed. Today, world cricket is scared of us. We owe it to Ganguly. He was the real bad ass, just what Indian cricket needed. 

I think you guys were kids so you dont remember. His tactics, his aggression. Heck, in one of the series against Australia, Ganguly made it a point to come late on the ground for toss. and that irked Steve waugh so much that he started getting restless and irritated. Needless to say, it affected his and teams game! 

 

None of the Indian captains were capable of this. And whichever tom dick and harry says Imran Khan, IK was nothing in front of ganguly. Ganguly changed a whole generation and paved a new road for Indian cricket. 

 

The greatness of a player cannot be calculated by stats alone. You need to understand the time the events took place. He did what the need of the hour was, and he did it better than anybody else!

I felt he got too much credit than what he deserved for our wins. As I said, if you look at the records, Ganguly has a terrific record as a captain. However, a lot of captains could have done almost as well. For example, if Dravid had become captain earlier, he could have had a very similar record. Sachin Tendulkar I agree was a horrible captain and we lost a lot because of Sachin's insipid captaincy. But the low bar that Sachin set during his captaincy was very easy to overcome for someone like Ganguly.

 

By the way, I never said Ganguly was a bad captain. I like many attributes about his captaincy. But I don't agree that he was the greatest ever. And by the way, I was 22 the day Ganguly became captain. I wouldn't exactly call myself a kid then.

 

[putrevus]

I do not see what was so great about Ganguly's captaincy especially his onfield tactics. He was very conservative and never took chances to win. His 2004 Indian team faced the most insipid bowling attack ever faced by an Indian team in Australia and yet contrived to lost one test.His teams never were mentally strong and that is one of reason why they failed so often in finals.

 

He should get credit for developing youngsters but that's about it.

[mishra]

Yes, BCCI had no power and our players were easily and unfairly targetted regularly and were afraid to speak up. Ganguly was first captain who stood up.

As far as records are concerned, Aussies were ATG team, African were very close at second place. So , If Ganguly's team manged some draws against them and that was never expected.

For newcomers, The gap between Aussies and rest was so big that I think not only us but even English Supporters rooted for India against matches involving us and Aussies. Almost Every cricket fan wanted someone to beat Aussies.

[Yoda-esque]

Yes