Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai’s book, Democracy’s XI: The Great Indian Cricket Story (published by Juggernaut Books, Rs 599), was unveiled by former India captain and current CAB president Sourav Ganguly at Calcutta Club at an evening organised by Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet (Kalam), in association with The Telegraph, on Thursday. After the launch, Sourav and Rajdeep spoke about Indian cricket where Maharaj left the audience in splits with his anecdotes and constant ribbing of Rajdeep. Excerpts from a riveting evening.

Team comes first

Sourav: I never wanted to do something which is common or had happened before. The other day Sana (his daughter) was going through this Internet site and it showed the top five Indian players of all time in terms of number of matches and runs. I was happy to see, forget about me being captain… it was (Sachin) Tendulkar, (Rahul) Dravid, Ganguly, Virender Sehwag… that sums up the success of the team. You don’t win on your own or because you’re captain. You win because you had some outstanding players in that generation. If you look at that generation, the top six — with Sehwag, Dravid, Sachin, myself, Laxman, and then Anil Kumble came after that and even Harbhajan Singh — they all played over 100 Test matches. I was fortunate enough to lead a bunch of boys who were extremely gifted. I don’t think you’ll see a batsman as good as a Tendulkar or a Dravid or a Laxman or even Kohli in the modern generation. Even young (M.S.) Dhoni came in that era, in 2003. It’s the squad you bring in. And when you know you have the talent, you try and use them in the correct way so that they become winners.

Rajdeep: Sachin Tendulkar led an Indian team with many of these players, a few were added later in 1999, and we lost 3-0 (vs Australia) and then match-fixing had just taken place. Now, against the backdrop of match-fixing, Sourav’s greatest contribution must be restoring faith in Indian cricket. A lot of stars fell off their pedestal... a lot of Indians had lost faith in the game. They thought every match was fixed and even the captain could be paid off. And then comes Sourav Ganguly and restores faith in a team where even the great Sachin Tendulkar was struggling, as captain. That’s a huge legacy.
In Sourav’s generation what changed was that more and more boys came from the small towns. He encouraged the Sehwags, Harbhajans.... Eight members of the present team are from small towns. Sourav encouraged these young boys, who would’ve otherwise felt intimidated. Today, they come with a self-confidence which reflects India itself… a more aggressive, in-your-face India. Also, Sourav didn’t consciously pick Bengali cricketers... Bombay cricketers or even Kapil Dev were often accused of picking players from their own region.

Winning overseas

Sourav: Beating Australia here (2001) was just remarkable. One-nil down at the start of the series and coming back to win 2-1… following on at Eden Gardens and still going on to win the series… that was remarkable. But as I always keep saying — which makes me unpopular with a few people — that your real abilities as a captain get tested when you go away from India.... I remember when we beat England at Headingley (2002), I won the toss and batted and Ian Botham looked at me and said, ‘Are you okay? Were you at the pub last night?’ and I told him, ‘No I don’t go to pubs. I don’t drink. I’m a complete teetotaller’. It was a green pitch, it was overcast and we won the toss and batted and scored 650. We went on to win that Test match. It was satisfying because we were slowly transforming as a team. That was one of my main aims as captain. When you travel abroad it shouldn’t be that you’ve got a talented side… Tendulkar will get a hundred, Ganguly will get a hundred, Dravid will get a hundred, but they will not win as a side. They don’t know how to win away and that was very important for me to change.

Beating Pakistan in Pakistan was special.... My legacy I think is the belief we had of winning away. Once I finished in 2006... we went to England in 2007 with Rahul as captain, where I was a member of the side and finished with most runs and we beat England after 25 years in England, which is not an easy thing to do. It’s a belief that we can go and win away and not just a strong team at home. When we travel to different cities and parts of the world, whether it is a green seamer or a damp wicket, we can stand up and perform. Because in life, I think everything is what you think you can. At times you don’t think you can do certain things.

In 2004 in Australia, when I went into the press conference after the fourth Test match, I saw everyone clapping. I asked an Australian journalist, ‘Why were you clapping?’, and he said, ‘This is the only team in the last 20 years that has come to Australia and dominated Australia and gone back with respect’. So you win some and lose some, but what you leave behind for your country in terms of your impression is what is very, very important.

Cricket then and now

Rajdeep: Cricket makes you a bit of a fanboy. Looking at these guys who are stars in your eyes, who you’ve grown up watching. If I have any regrets about the present generation, it’s that they are always surrounded by agents and sponsors. Great credit to Sourav, he would always pick up the phone, even when he was captain. He didn’t think the manager would think something or what will the board president say if I say something.... I wanted to connect the past with the present. Sports is a baton relay. Virat Kohli should realise, before him there was (Gundappa) Viswanath, before Viswanath there was (Vijay) Manjrekar, before him there was (Vijay) Merchant. That was the biggest joy of this book, connecting one generation with the other and listening to wonderful stories.

Captaincy isn’t my way or highway...

Sourav: Everyone has their own style (of captaincy). That’s why it’s important to not brand anyone. You have to allow an individual to blossom. I had to be aggressive on the field but off it, I’m the most docile person you’ll meet. I never shout at anyone, my wife doesn’t feed me, I still don’t shout… Rajdeep keeps writing all sorts of stuff about me and I still say he’s my best friend... (grins).

On the field, I realised if the Indian team had to win, I had to get Sehwag ready at 9 in the morning. Every time he’d wake up in the morning and feel lonely, he would ask for milk because his mother used to give him milk. So, I had to transform him at 9.30. I remember chasing 325 at Lord’s (2002) and I was very angry… another final, another 300 and I thought we wouldn’t win it. I was walking down the Lord’s staircase to bat with Sehwag and he was whistling. I was like, ‘What’s going on? We’ve given 300 runs in 50 overs, we’ve lost the last three finals and you’re whistling?’. And he said ‘We’ll win this’.

When I asked Sehwag to open, he had never opened before, even for Delhi or North Zone. He was happy batting at five and having his dal-chawal. I don’t think anybody is born to play in a particular position, you have to adapt. I told him, ‘Someone as good as you cannot sit on the benches because you never know when you’d get an opportunity’. Three was Dravid, four was Sachin, five was Sourav and six was V.V.S. So I asked Sehwag to give it a try. If it works great, you’re a winner, you win cricket matches for us… if it doesn’t we’ll see what happens after that.

In the first game at Lord’s he got a 90, in the second he got 120 on a green seamer in Nottingham, and before the third game in a press conference he said he wants to bat in the middle order! I had to tell him, ‘Only you can do this! You get 90 as an opener, next game you get a 100 on a green seamer and in the third you wanted to play in the middle order?!’ And he was like, ‘No no, they wanted headlines, I’ve given them headlines’. And that’s what Virender Sehwag was all about.

I’ll tell you another story, about Zaheer Khan. It was in 2003 in Australia and I was really keen to win that series as captain because we used to get bullied in Australia before that. It was the Brisbane Test match, we got 400 and I got a hundred. When Matthew Hayden came out to bat, I told Zak, ‘He scores runs every time he sees us. He’s either sweeping or driving or cutting. Let’s bowl short to him, he’s not set yet. I’ll set you a field. I’ll give you a third man, a deep square leg, mid-on, deep fine leg and just two slips. You just come and bounce. He’s like, ‘Yeah yeah, we’ll do that’.

So I come and stand at mid-on and Zaheer runs up, he pitches it up and bowls a lovely outswinger. So I come back and ask him, ‘Warmed up?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m absolutely warmed up!’ It was the start of a series, he was my premier fast bowler, I didn’t want to be too tough on him. Six balls in that over, he bowled everything pitched up and going away from the left-hander, and all this while in the last two days we’d been chatting about the moment Hayden comes, we’ll bowl it short.

So I was very angry with him and said, ‘Listen, there are about 20,000 watching here and a 100,000 watching in India. If you want them to say that the captain is a fool, you please make a public statement saying that the captain is a fool but don’t ask me to give you a third man, a deep square leg, mid-on, deep fine leg and then pitch it up’.
When you’re a captain you always have to deal with this. It’s never my way or highway… whether it’s a Dhoni or a Virat Kohli, you have to find a way to get the best out of your players, because not many will listen to you and it’s not a corporate world where you throw them out of their jobs… you have to find a way out. So you gotta be patient and find a way to succeed with them.

Virat Kohli

Sourav: I like Virat Kohli. When I see him on the field, I’ll sit on my sofa and watch. First he’s a champion player, secondly when I see him captain India, he’s passionate. He wants India to win in all conditions. It doesn’t mean somebody else didn’t, they also did. But this man is special.

Kohli is a fantastic captain. I don’t know what he does in the dressing room, I don’t see what he does tactically inside, I don’t know what he speaks in the team meeting but the way he looks after his players is remarkable. What I see of Virat with M.S. Dhoni is amazing. A champion player who’s probably on the last leg of his career and Virat coming and saying, ‘He’s my man, I want him to play’. You know you just change a player.

The first thing he said about Hardik Pandya was that he is the Ben Stokes of Indian cricket... that’s how you build players... he feels, ‘look, the captain backs me’.

Tragic hero: Azharuddin

Rajdeep: This is not the best-ever XI. It starts with nepotism because I chose my father, so it’s a personal choice. It includes cricketers who in the times in which they lived either made a significant contribution or represent a value system that links them to my larger idea of cricket as meritocracy or driven by democratic value.
Mohammad Azharuddin carried himself with great dignity and I felt he let me down with what happened with match-fixing. He’s a tragic hero but it’s a remarkable story because even in that Test match in Calcutta, most of his equipment had been borrowed. He deserves to be recognised for what he achieved in Indian cricket.

No place for nepotism

Rajdeep: A politician’s son can become a politician. A film star’s son can become a film star.... Abhishek Bachchan, Tusshar Kapoor became film stars because Amitabh Bachchan and Jeetendra were film stars. But a cricketer’s son cannot become a cricketer and play for India unless he has talent. I realised that, unfortunately, a little late in life... I was bowled by Abdul Qadir (at Oxford) for two and while I was walking away from the crease, Saleem Malik looks at me and says, ‘You come from India and you can’t play spin?’ and I realised I wasn’t just good enough and that’s what makes it a meritocracy.

Bare-bodied on the Lord’s balcony

Rajdeep: Not every captain can do what he (Sourav) did on the Lord’s balcony…

Sourav: Did you see the picture of M.S. Dhoni after winning the T20 World Cup? Did you see that bare body?

Rajdeep has forgotten that!

Rajdeep: M.S. Dhoni doing that endeared him as this new macho hero, but when Sourav did it, people were like, ‘Who is this Bengali bhadralok doing what he’s doing?!’

Sourav: To all Bengali bhadraloks here, we can’t do anything! We can only wear kurtas and dhotis….

It was remarkable. We didn’t drop a game in the entire tournament. Playing England in England, Sri Lanka were good then, they had some wonderful players and we just dominated. A lot of that expression after the game was a sigh of relief as well, because before that in three finals we had lost and I was slowly getting fed up of getting to championship and tri-nation finals and losing. Also that’s just how I am… a little abrasive... I saw something at Wankhede stadium when the series was 3-3 and then we went and beat them, so it was a bit of everything. I just got a bit carried away….

Rajdeep: I think it was a significant moment. We underestimate what Sourav did on the Lord’s balcony. In my mind, for an Indian captain to have done what he did sent out a powerful message to the English. My father’s generation used to tell me that when they went to England, they were awed by the idea of being at Lord’s. They were beaten before they entered the ground because they were intimidated by the big names of English cricket. And then to have the Indian captain on the Lord’s balcony doing what Sourav did, sent out a powerful message to the English, we shouldn’t underestimate Sourav’s body language!

Sourav: Yeah, and forget about my debut hundred at Lord’s!

Look, there was this other side to it also. I realised after I wasn’t captain anymore that a lot of people were worried if they could manage me or not. Maybe I should have been a bit more on the docile side.... Because every time Sourav Ganguly’s name came up, it was like, ‘No, no Sourav Ganguly is a little too powerful and strong, let’s leave him aside’. So I’ve faced that side as well.

When Sehwagism stumped Dada

Text: Rwitoban Deb
Pictures: Rashbehari Das