Dada

There is something special about him. Everytime he walks out to bat to the centre of the Eden Gardens he is greeted by a defeaning roar. A roar composed of voices of varying pitches that synchronize to set the stadium on fire. The din created is loud enough to be heard in the vast tracts of the Maidan that lie to one side of the Eden Gardens. Well, Sourav Ganguly does not have an unenviable batting record in front of his home crowd. It seems that the burden of 80,000 expectations does distract him. But the average Bengali is forgiving. He never loses faith in sons of the soil of the Hooghly. It is this faith that has kept the "Prince of Kolkata" going. It is this faith that has given him tremendous self belief and arrogance. And on the 8th of May it clearly showed.
Ganguly does not believe in mincing words - not even in front of the mighty Australians. He rubbished their strategy of mental disintegration and took the verbal duels to the Australian camp. He has a penchant for backing youngsters even in the face of stiff opposition from the mandarins of the game. He must be credited for bringing in some great players during his captaincy - Yuvraj, Harbhajan, Dhoni, Sehwag. He forced Rahul Dravid to don the gloves so that he could give depth to the batting line up. During his captaincy the Indian shed off the tag of "Tigers at home and mice away" to notch up some scintillating overseas wins. In a matter of years Team India had shed its fuddy duddy image to emerge as a strong force to reckon with.
Ganguly often uses his gut feel and intuition to take decisions. His 'devil may care' attitude helps him to trash conventional decisions. And yesterday he showed a glimpse of that. By the time the commentators had finished brainwashing the viewers into believing that the captain winning the toss should opt to field, Ganguly had walked to the pich , had won the toss and elected to bat - much to the disbelief of the 'pundits'. Well, thats 'Dada' for you. His 3 over spell brought back memories of his Toronto campaign where he had used him goldern arm to devastating effect. He choked the Royal Challengers with his deceptive pace and his celebration after having taken Dravid's wicket was a treat to watch.
Ganguly's resurgence may be a trifle late in the day for the Knight Riders but I do not care. As long as Dada keeps leading his 'black and gold' armoured army there is hope for me and also for the crowd of 80,000.