Sourav Ganguly after India’s victory on Sunday. (AP)

Kanpur, April 13: Sourav Ganguly has done his best to enhance the Test-captaincy claims of the ODI skipper who got him out of the one-day squad.

But Mahendra Singh Dhoni may not be tempted to drop the Bengal left-hander just yet even if he gets the big promotion sooner than expected.

“Sourav Ganguly was fantastic with the bat,” Dhoni said today, acknowledging the Calcuttan’s majestic 87 on a tricky wicket yesterday as the “crucial” reason he had won his first Test leading India.

If that Man-of-the-Match knock was Sourav’s advance Bengali New Year gift to Dhoni, the stopgap skipper tried to repay him with a token of appreciation today.

At the fall of Virender Sehwag at 32, with just 30 more needed, Sourav instead of Rahul Dravid stepped out to bat. An old-fashioned move from a new-age skipper to give the hero of the game a chance to hit the winning runs?

But no, Dhoni had more serious reasons.

He explained he didn’t want another wicket to fall (but it did when Wasim Jaffer got out immediately), and thought Sourav was the best man to ensure that, ahead of “The Wall” himself and V.V.S. Laxman, the other first-innings star.

And it wasn’t just Dhoni, it appears even the South Africans revised their game plan after watching Sourav’s assured batting on Saturday. Here Dhoni provided his take on why the Calcuttan’s contribution to the series-levelling win went beyond what the scoreboard showed.

“Such kind of batting changes the total mindset of the team who’s batting next. It helped us set up our game plan and bowl out the South Africans,” he said after the eight-wicket victory. How?

“You see the ball turning and bouncing. And then, after witnessing Sourav’s innings, the immediate mindset of the opponent will change. They will try to settle down, like what he (Sourav) did…. and that worked for us. They were pretty slow and we used our spinners to grab that opportunity,” Dhoni said.

His opposite number did not say his team’s crawl was inspired by Sourav — whose strike rate of 73 was the highest of the innings — but conceded the charge of slow batting.

“Sourav’s innings swung the game out of our control,” Graeme Smith said. “He was nice and was in full control of every shot. We dropped him at 40 and that was the turning point.”

“It feels nice when for your contribution the team wins. It always gives you a sense of satisfaction. Overall I am satisfied,” Sourav said.

“We were down 0-1 and I played a role in squaring the series. From that perspective, I am happy with the way I played.”

For a player who somehow always seems to walk on the knife’s edge of being dropped, he has every right to be.

Dhoni, who had said he was “sending a message to some people” while dropping Sourav and Dravid for the Australia tri-series, today appeared to balance his senior-junior equation.

“We did well, but it doesn’t mean we are better off without Sachin (Tendulkar) or Anil (Kumble). It is better to have them in the side than not, but the credit goes to the boys who stood up in their absence.”

He obviously meant the juniors. But today of all days, he may have been thinking of a 35-year-old left-hander, too.