Kolkata: Father-in-law of Sourav Ganguly planned to gift a museum to preserve his memories of his cricketing career. Getting a nod from the former Indian cricket captain, Sanjib Roy already started working on it. The Opel Astra car Ganguly won during 1997 Sahara Cup against Pakistan as the first ODI Man of the Series award, has been placed in the museum.
Sanjib Roy, father of Dona Ganguly got the idea of preserving cricketing articles of Sourav Ganguly seeing the residence of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose at Lansdowne road. There the car used by Netaji has been preserved in a decorative way. Seeing that Mr. Roy thought of preserving the car of Sourav, as well as his other memorable articles.
Sourav Ganguly won his first Man of the Series against Pakistan during the Sahara Cup 1997. In that series he won four Man of the Match awards. The first match was not so good for him. He scored 17 and picked up two wickets and won the Man of the Match. In the second match he scored 32 and picked up two wickets. In the fourth match he could not perform well as a batsman, but he picked up five crucial wickets that earned him the Man of the Match. The fourth match was better for him as an all-rounder. He picked up two wickets and scored 75. The total of 222 runs and 15 wickets earned him the Man of the Series and he was awarded the Opel Astra.
Beside the Opel Astra several photographs and books on Sourav will also be stored in the museum. The famous photograph of Sourav of waving his jersey at the Lords after winning the NatWest Series against England will be stored in the museum. Among the great photographs of Sourav of scoring his 1st ODI century and his 1st century in a test match at the Eden Gardens will be kept in the museum of Sanjib Roy. In the list bats pads have also been enlisted. A chart of statistics of the career of Sourav Gnaguly will be displayed in the museum.
Mr. Roy said, “When I asked Sourav for the permission of making such a museum he was silent for sometimes bowing his head down. After that he nodded his head. The silence can be taken as his approval. Then I decided to gift him the museum on his 44th birthday.”
The museum is still in progress. A glass house has been provided for the car as the Humber Singer car of Rabindranath Tagore at Santiniketan. In the same room the photographs and books have been preserved also.