The Indian board chief allegedly attended selection committee meetings and even guaranteed wicketkeeper Wriddhiman Saha, a spot on the national squad.
King of Eden Gardens
Sourav Ganguly has been pampered to the point of insanity in Kolkata. The city still refers to the 50-year-old by his childhood nickname, Maharaja, even treating him like a king. It was the one place where he was able to consistently prevail.
When young Ganguly was one of the top cricketers in the world, his father was a powerful fixture at Eden Gardens. Jagmohan Dalmiya, India’s most influential cricket administrator since his early days with Team India, was like a father to the players.
Politicians in Bengal, both communists and those who terminated the Red rule, were in a perpetual courtship of the terrifyingly popular batsman. They would aid in his transition from player to coach or manager.
Sourav Ganguly in his young days
The majority of Bengal’s major players in the early 1990s, when Sourav Ganguly was on his way to becoming the next great Indian batter, came from outside of the state. They had benefited from the sports-crazed city’s dearth of home-grown talent, like Arun Lal, Ashok Malhotra, Saba Karim, and Narendra Hirwani. The Africans were beginning to dominate the soccer fields, or “maidans.”
This incident with Ganguly came at a perfect time. He was the state’s most charismatic captain in cricket history and a rare kind of world-class cricketer. Not a single bad word was said or heard about Ganguly in Bengal.
Getting things right-
At all appearances, he was going above and beyond the call of duty, working unpaid overtime shifts in order to advance Indian cricket. According to historical evidence, Ganguly, who was known for being a non-partisan captain and is credited with eliminating regionalism in Indian cricket, always chose a squad based on how talented its members were. That is the legacy he left.
As the head of the Indian Cricket Board, he would participate in meetings of the selection committee and is even alleged to have guaranteed Wriddhiman Saha a spot in the Indian national squad (this claim was made by Saha himself).
Conflict of Intrest
Ganguly’s idea of a “conflict of interest” was very vague, convenient, and ignorant.
He kept being the face of a fantasy gaming app, even though the Indian team was sponsored by a rival company. Even when it was pointed out that JSW Sports, the sports arm of the business conglomerate JSW Group, was also a joint owner of the IPL team Delhi Capitals, he didn’t delete the Instagram photo of him in a JSW Cement T-shirt with the caption “at work.”
