Sourav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid made their respective Test debuts in the same match, between India and England in 1996 at Lord’s cricket ground. While Ganguly made it more memorable with a fine and gritty 131, Dravid walked away for 95 and missed out on his international first ton by a whisker.
Nonetheless, both Ganguly and Dravid served Indian cricket for many years and led the team to memorable wins — courtesy their individual brilliance and respective captaincy stints. To date, the two former Indian captains continue to serve Indian cricket like no other. While Ganguly has taken over the BCCI office as the President since 2019 and has being done a fine job, Dravid has been a role model for several youngsters and is a major reason for India’s daunting and lethal bench strength.
Dravid is the head of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) and will act as the head coach for India’s white-ball specialists’ tour of Sri Lanka, from next month. Ahead of him taking over yet another new role in Indian cricket, former Indian batsman and batting coach Sanjay Bangar lavished praise on the ‘invaluable’ duo.
‘It still gives goosebumps’
Bangar told Star Sports, “Well, it’s invaluable and not only as players they have continued to contribute in whatever capacities they can. They have been associated with Indian cricket in various capacities. First as players. It still gives goosebumps – like, how both of them scored those runs in their debut Test matches. Sourav, obviously, scoring those hundreds and Rahul when he was on 95 – making that decision to walk off when nobody appealed. So, that tells us a lot about their characters. “
“And from there on how somebody like Sourav Ganguly took up captaincy in a difficult phase of Indian cricket and then gave that belief and was forthright as a leader. So, he was the one who inspired that fighting spirit and India won a lot of overseas Test matches under him. Rahul went from strength to strength. Especially, I was fortunate that I could play along with him in that phase wherein he was at his prime. So, from 2002 to 2006, he was batting as at his best,” he added.
Bangar played during the famous Dravid-Ganguly era, though he couldn’t cement his place across formats. Following the match-fixing fiasco in Indian cricket, it is safe to say that it was the pair of Dravid-Ganguly which took Indian cricket to great heights and set the bar high for the likes of MS Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, etc.
