Why Ganguly must go

I have always admired the way Sourav Ganguly has tranformed the Indian cricket team from a bunch of habitual losers to a fighting unit. It is ironical that in the last test, as Prem Panicker aptly put it, the team seemed to have come full circle. A sheepish unit looking to draw the match from outset. It looked so much like the team of the 90s when Tendulkar used to be lone warrior. Only difference is , Tendulkar is still around but does not want to dominate the bowlers the way he used to do; the fighter now is Virendar Sehwag.

The main culprit however is our captain, Sourav Ganguly. I had been calling for his head ever since the world cup. However, basking in the glory of a good world cup and good series with Australia, he could be dismissive about any compaints that came from the media. The cat is out of the bag though.

To support what I mean , I did a little search. Here is the data that tells you about the performance of Ganguly in onde day internationals since start of 2003, which includes the world cup. The salient features are:

1. All three of his centuries are against " second string" oppositions like Kenya and Namibia.
2. He has 12 half centuries. But here is the more important stuff. 58.33 percent of these scores are against "second string" oppositions like Bangladesh, Kenya , Namibia and UAE.
3. The average is a pathetic 35.93. When you keep in mind that most of his high scores are against these "nobodies" of international cricket, it looks much worse. It is also worth mentioning that all of his centuries are unbeaten, and that drives the average very high.
4. Againt "decent" opposition, which includes Aus, SA, Pak, SL, WI, Eng,NZ and even Zim the average is 25.24. This is over two years of international cricket.

Based on this, Ganguly is definitely not a match winner any more. An average of 25.24 over a period of two years is not what I would call great. Mind you, this is the average of a middle order batsman in one day games.

What is much more disturbing is the way this guys tries to stonewall criticism. His usual refrain is: I have scored so many centuries and so many runs. Point well taken. But someone should tell him that Sunil Gavaskar and Allen Border have excellent records as well. One would wonder if by this logic these folks could eternal license to play for their respective countries.

Ganguly is hanging by the last straw now. He has been a great player, but that is a thing of past. Just hope he has the grace to call it a day on his own so that he does not need to be shown the door.