XtraTime Web Desk: We all know that legends of Indian cricket Sachin Tendulkar & Sourav Ganguly were best of friends during their time of play for the nation. The two opened the innings for India many times in ODIs and they have the world record for scoring most runs as a opening pair as well. But do you know once Sachin told to Sourav that,”If you want to stay in my team don’t do this again”. Yes you have listened it right and the person who have revealed this is none other than Sourav Ganguly himself.
Let’s relive the incident in this story. It took place back in 1997 in the month of March. India were playing the third test against West Indies at Barbados and after back to back draws in first two matches the visitors were in commending position to win the game. In the fourth innings India had to chase just 120 runs to register an emphatic win over Windies. In the first innings the Indian batsmen had scored 319 runs and the figure of 120 to win was supposed to be very easy which had batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Mohammad Azharuddin, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman & Navjot Singh Sidhu. After taking a lead in the first innings India wraped up the Windies batting line up on just 140 runs.
Among the Indian bowlers Abey Kuruvilla took a five-for and he got good support from Venkatesh Prasad and Doda Ganesh who grapped three and two wickets respectively to destroy a very good batting line-up which had Brian Lara, Shivnarayan Chandrapaul, Carl Hooper and others. We all know that due to time difference, all the matches which are played in West Indies have been telecasted live in India at night. Bengal’s very own Sourav Ganguly just had started playing for India regularly and the whole state was awoke to see the Bengal Tiger on that day as they thought that Sourav would play a crucial part in India’s historic win over West Indies.
But things went wrong for India at the start of the chase. India lost the first three wickets of Navjot Singh Sidhu, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman on just 16 runs. When the team’s total was just 32, skipper Sachin Tendulkar too went back to the pavilion. He got out by giving a easy catch to Brian Lara from Ian Bishop’s delivery. After that everyone counted on Sourav to win the game for India who made a remarkable test debut a year ago by hitting century against England at the Lord’s.
At that time Sourav & Azharuddin were at the crease and India needed 80 runs to win, but everyone in the country thought that the two would definitely get those runs for the side. Though it didn’t happen as Sourav was clean bowled by a very fast delivery of Curtly Ambrose when the team’s score was 45 and after another 6 runs India’s last hope Azharuddin too got out to Ambrose. It was quite evident that India would lose the game and it did happen when they were all out on 81 runs and the hosts won the test match by 38 runs. After that they also won the final test as well and bagged the series 2-0.
But it was true that if India won that test match at Barbados then result of the series would have been different. On that day when India lost their top batsmen one by one skipper Sachin Tendulkar was in tears by seeing that. At one stage he lost his temper as well. That story was shared by Sourav Ganguly himself at a youtube show called ‘Breakfast with Champions’.
On the incident Sourav said,” I am seeing Sachin since I was just 14 years of age. That was the very first time when I saw him crying like that. He was the captain of the side and it was quite evident that he would be very sad.”
Ganguly further added,” He got very angry on that day and told me, you have to everyday in the morning. If you want to stay in my team, you have to change yourself. But Sourav didn’t argue with Sachin on that matter. As per Sourav,”He was the captain of the side, he had all the rights to get angry with his players.”
In world cricket Sachin has been regarded as the ‘God of the Game’, but we all know that as captain he wasn’t successful at all. Under Sachin’s leadership India had won just four out of 24 matches. In 73 ODI matches he had only won 23 matches as captain. After this failure he lost all the courage to stay as the captain of Indian cricket team.
During the launch of his autobiography in Mumbai, Sachin stated that,” The failure as captain of India had effected my personal life as well. When I spent time with my family, the pain of those losses haunted me all the time.”
One can easily understand that the loss to West Indies at Barbados was one of the main reasons for Sachin’s decision of leaving captaincy as it was the most painful loss for Master Blaster as captain.