The Indian Cricket team has seen captaincy of so many legendary players, with each one of them having astonishing skills. Former Indian opener, Wasim Jaffer, debuted under the captaincy of Sachin Tendulkar, but played most of his cricket – 15 Tests – under Rahul Dravid’s leadership.
Jaffer rated Sourav Ganguly as one of the finest Indian captains he has ever played under. Jaffer, who has played 5 Tests out of his 31 under Ganguly’s captaincy, said that the current BCCI president was the one who polished the Indian side after 2000.
“Sourav Ganguly was the one who made the team after 2000. He had the temperament, backed the players, and gave them a longer rope,” Jaffer told CricTracker.
India’s side was in a complete overhaul after Jaffer’s debut series – India versus South Africa in February 2000 – was markedly impaired by match-fixing. During that point, Ganguly was appointed as the captain and had to rebuild everything from the scratch. The former Indian opener was instant to bring in the youth and added players like Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Virender Sehwag to the team.
Jaffer reminisced that Ganguly made Sehwag open, who had been a middle-order batsman his entire life and also backed Zaheer, Harbhajan and Yuvraj to do well.
“He made Sehwag open the batting and brought players like Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh,” Jaffer said.
Ganguly led India in 146 ODIs, out of which India won 76, lost 65 and 5 were no results. Especially in Test cricket, Ganguly showed even better captaincy results. In his 49 Tests as a skipper, Ganguly led India to victory on 21 occasions, losing 13 while 15 ended up as a draw.
The former Indian captain retired in 2008 after playing 113 Test, 311 ODIs, scoring 7217 and 11363 runs in the respective formats. Ganguly also had 23 ODI hundreds to his name which is the fourth most by an Indian after Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, and Rohit Sharma.
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