How will one best remember Sourav Ganguly? What will be his most enduring legacy. These are the questions being asked all over the cricketing world on a day Ganguly retires from international cricket at Nagpur. While some day that he will be best remember for his never-say-die spirit and perhaps as India's best ever captain, history will also surely remember him as someone who rescued Indian cricket from its deepest low: the tribulations of match fixing. At a time when the match-fixing scandal was eating into very edifice of Indian cricket and the national side under Sachin Tendulkar was disarray, Ganguly assumed the mantle of leadership. To compound problems, he was soon challenged by Steve Waugh's record-breaking Australians seeking to conquer the "final frontier". It was a team that came to India on back of 15 wins on the trot.
Ganguly's initiation into test captaincy in 2000 could not have been more dramatic. To add to his woes, India was mauled at the Wankhede in a little under three-and-a-half days in the first Test of the series. India, however, won the Eden Test, thanks to a miracle partnership between V.V.S. Laxman and Rahul Dravid and a match-winning spell by Harbhajan Singh. This was followed by a series-winning victory at Chennai. Ganguly converted Virendra Sehwag into a opener. a decision that still continues to pay dividends. He played Dravid at number six and promoted Laxman up to the order, an innovation that won India the Eden Test. He inspired Harbhajan to become a proven match-winner in all forms of the game and motivated the term to win in adverse overseas conditions. As a batsman Ganguly scored prolifically in both forms of the game. He was god-like in his offside play with the ball caressing through the offside to the boundary. But how can we forget Ganguly dancing down the track and hitting spinners out of the ground? Nor can we forget his fight staging several comebacks. And who can better tell us than Ganguly that modern competitive sport is more often than not not played from the heart and not the mind? Ganguly is gone but his absence from international cricket will perhaps be more keenly felt than his presence.
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