- Sourav Ganguly File Pic
Kolkata: This was a very beautiful evening at the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata for the Kolkata Literary Meet 2018 to talk about the new book wrote by Boria Majumdar titled “Eleven Gods and a Billion Indians: The On and Off the Field Story of Cricket in India and Beyond”
Sourav Ganguly, CoA Chairman Vinod Rai and Boria Majumder were present in the meet. They talked about the book. The book is about behind the scenes of India’s most popular sport—going from early tours in 1886 to the more contemporary IPL, offering a complete understanding of the evolution of the game both on and off the field. Featuring material that has never-been-released, this book sheds new light on cases like Monkey gate, the suspension of Lalit Modi, match-fixing scandals, and more.
Weaving together personal interviews, photographs, and letters, asks the questions that need answering, among them: Has internal conflict impacted the on- field performance of the Indian cricket team? Did some icons fail the country and the sport by trying to conceal important facts during the spot-fixing investigation? And does it matter to the ordinary fan who heads the BCCI as long as there is transparency and accountability in the system?
Virat Kohli and Anil Kumble controversy is also in the book in a chapter. “Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Sachin Tendulkar and Virat Kohli are the Gods of cricket to me but, I personally believe that cricketers should not call as God.” Sourav Ganguly said.
“It was unfortunate and it can happen in every profession there is no guarantee of life.” Sourav said about Greg Chappell and Sourav Ganguly controversy. Author Boria Majumder quoted Sourav Ganguly as he once said in an interview that “Stay away and be safe from Chappell.”
After being dropped from Indian team Sourav came back strongly and played for three years “It was my best three years in my career” Sourav said.
Talking about the cricket administration Vinod Rai, Supreme Court nominated BCCI chief said, “Cricketers should be in the administration as a cricketer can understand another fellow cricketers’ pain.”
Boria said,” Whoever in charge has to run the administration with efficiency not for the personal interest.”
About match fixing scandal Ganguly said,” When I started playing cricket there was hardly any money. When I went to England tour I just got 3000 rupees after the tour but, now cricketers can earn this amount of money in five minutes. This incident happened when cricketers started to get money. It can happen but, it’s unfortunate.”