Ganguly should be more flexible
By: Venkatachalam. A. Krishnan

This was published in CRICKETNEXT.COM on the 13h of February, 2003

http://www.cricketnext.com/yoursay/krishnan/krishnan1.html
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D Van Bunge should be a proud man. He comes from a country where the game of Cricket is as popular as Ice-hockey is in India. The entire annual budget for Cricket in their country is less than what some of the Indian superstars earn per day.

And yet he can proudly boast that in a match where names like Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Virendar Sehwag figured in, he emerged the top-scorer. This is no mean achievement. After all, he comes from a country called Holland.

The inexplicable display of the Indians against the Dutch minnows at the ICC World Cup in South Africa should certainly raise quite a few questions about the actual ability of the so called GREAT CRICKETERS.

`We have been playing good Cricket over the past 12 months or so and we are confident that we will perform better’ – This should sound familiar to all those who have been following Indian Cricket. This has been the standard comment from Saurav Ganguly, after every poor show.

What have they done after they emerged victorious in the ICC Champions Trophy played in Srilanka?!

They lost the one day series at home against the West Indies, took some historical battering in New Zealand, lost even to a provincial side in South Africa and now comes this pathetic performance.

Mr. Ganguly, isn’t it time to stop repeating the same old dialogue again and look towards setting things right?

A captain, who is not leading by example, can never demand the best out of his team. Ganguly looked clueless even against the amateur Dutch Bowling attack. Maybe, it is time for him to think about throwing out the ego factor, accepting things as they are and coming down from some of his so-far-hard-and-fast notions, the most glaring of them being his refusal to vacate the opening position.

Yuvraj Singh has been stroking the ball very well and has looked to be the most confident of the lot, next only to Sehwag. Maybe he can come in at number 3 after Sachin and Sehwag. This will provide him an opportunity to play himself in and build a longer innings. At the moment, his problem is that he always finds himself in the middle when the team is tottering. He is a free-flowing stroke-maker and he is forced to curb his natural instincts.

Yuvraj looks much more mature now and swapping places with him will give Ganguly an opportunity to avoid the new ball. Even if he puts up a brave face, his confidence must be in tatters and this change will do him a lot of good. And, at the present rate, the team won’t lose anything even if Ganguly fails to score lower down the order.

If the Indians refuse to be flexible in their approach, they can’t be competitive at all and it will not be a surprise if they fail to reach even the next stage of the tournament.

Let us all hope that they avert more disasters and we wont see any more proud men like D VAN BUNGE!

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