I am not writing this post as a huge follower of Sourav Ganguly. I, anyway, do not like this game of cricket, so there is no chance of being a huge fan of a cricketer. But people in this country eat, sleep and talk cricket from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM, so do the TV channels and the newspapers. So people like me are forced to read and watch cricket and all the dirt flowing around it.
It is in the human nature to feel bad whenever we see injustice and ill-treatment. In the recently concluded IPL auction, no franchisee bid for Sourav which is well within their right. They are here to make money, provide us entertainment and get more famous. So it is very much natural to expect them apply their business brains while making decisions.
It is very easy to understand why did they not take him. After all, who would want to have a 37 year old cricketer where even a single run saved can win a match for you. But it definitely makes a business sense to take Sourav in. Not because he did extremely well in last year's IPL, not because he is still the most successful Indian cricket captain, but because he is still a big brand to sell anywhere in this country, let alone Bengal. His show 'Dadagiri' is a huge hit on TV. His comments on cricketing or non-cricketing subjects are still read by a lot of cricket crazy people in this country. IPL franchisees do not make money by winning the tournament, they do it by selling their players to big brands to endorse products. Sourav would have definitely earned them the money invested on him.
Lets now come to some cricketing reasons why Sourav should have been taken. The man has a never-say-die attitude which made him won some almost lost matches. Who have thought he would succeed in South Africa when he made a 'comeback' to the Indian national team. I do believe there is a lot of cricket left in him, otherwise he would have kept himself away from the auction like Anil Kumble did. Is it wrong for a cricketer to wish to play cricket. At 37, he is still the best left handed batsman the country has. As far as the cricketing brain is concerned no one can beat him here. He knows how to extract the best from the juniors (Harbhajan and Yuvraj will vouch for it).
So is it something else which led to this 'mass rejection' by the franchisees? We are still waiting for the answer. Sourav recently said had he understood a bit of politics he wouldn't have been in this situation. Is he too late to understand this? He is, no doubt about it.
