Ganguly and Tendulkar have the best record as an opening pair.
Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar opened the innings in ODI for India 136 times and added an impressive and current world record haul of 6609 runs with 21-century partnerships and an average of 49.32.
It was noticed that Ganguly took the strike the first ball most of the time when they walked out together to open the innings. A fan was keen to know the reason behind it. He asked the current BCCI president the same question in a Q&A segment with Mayank Agarwal.
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Ganguly said Sachin was always ready with two answers when he told him to take the strike first. "Always he did. He had an answer to that and I used to tell him 'yaar sometimes you also face the first ball'.
"He had 2 answers to it - he believed when his form was good it should continue and that he should remain at the non-striker's end, and then when his form wasn't good he said 'I should remain at the non-striker's end because it takes the pressure off me'," Ganguly said on Agarwal's show Open Nets with Mayank on BCCI.tv.
But Ganguly knew how to make Sachin take strike first and it worked for him mostly. "He had an answer for both, good form and bad form. Until and unless somedays you walk past him, went and stood at the non-striker's end and he was already on TV and he would be forced to be at the striker's end. That has happened one or two times, I've just walked past him and stood at the non-striker's end," he revealed.