Sourav Ganguly
, the former captain credited for instilling belief back into
Indian cricket
, turned 52 on Monday.
Famously given the name of 'Prince of Kolkata' by former England captain Geoffrey Boycott, Ganguly took over India captaincy four years after his famous Test debut at Lord's in 1996 where he struck a century against England.
He took over captaincy in the year 2000, when Indian cricket was trying to come out of the match-fixing scandal, and soon started grooming young talent and throw them in the line of fire.
The two names that come straight to mind on those lines are Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh.
Under Ganguly's leadership India reached the finals of ICC Knockout Trophy in 2000, followed by the famous win over Australia in a Test series at home to win the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2-1.
One of the iconic moments of Indian cricket arrived in the year 2002, when 'Dada' took off his jersey on the Lord's balcony after India came back from the dead to beat England in the Natwest Trophy final. He then led India to the final of the 2003 ODI World Cup, where India lost to Australia.
In 2005-06, Ganguly experienced tough times when his relations with the then coach Greg Chappell strained and he was left out of the Indian team. However, he made a famous comeback to the side and played his last Test in 2008, after which he retired from international cricket as the most successful India captain at that time.
Ganguly went on to play the Indian Premier League till 2012.
He featured in 113 Tests and 311 ODIs for India, scoring 18,575 runs in international cricket.
Ganguly went on the become a cricket administrator, first heading the Cricket Association of Bengal and then going on to become the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
English (US) ·