Considered the captain who turned around the Indian team, especially in Test cricket, Sourav Ganguly had been appointed as the skipper when the demons of match-fixing were at their worst. Ganguly became the Indian team captain in 2000 after Sachin Tendulkar stepped down after a poor Australia tour in 1999.
Right after Ganguly took over in 2000, the match-fixing scandal erupted that saw Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja being banned from international cricket, and the Bengal cricketer having to rebuild the team in his mold.
Ganguly spoke openly about captaining India for the first time and addressed the ‘match-fixing' discussions that had even reached the team's dressing room. Ganguly stated that he had no notion that Indian players were invited to do ‘match-fixing'. He asked Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid if they had been contacted to undertake such a thing.
"The issues that the Indian team faced just before I became captain - betting, match-fixing - I didn't even know about these things. I kept asking Sachin [Tendulkar] and Rahul [Dravid] 'Does it actually happen? Has anyone approached you?' Because no one had approached me. So, I spoke to Sachin, 'Tujhe kisi ne poocha?' He said no. We all used to play both formats - Tests and one-dayers. Asked Anil [Kumble] too, he said 'No. Nobody asked me'. So, I wasn't too sure what it even was. That [captaincy] was the job in hand. So, I didn't have these things in mind," Ganguly opened up on the Raj Shamani podcast.
Ganguly was only 27 years old when he captained an Indian team featuring Sachin Tendulkar and Mohammed Azharuddin, under whose captaincy he had played. Hence, he was nervous when his time came to give a dressing room talk to the boys.
"I still remember our first match was in Kochi. On the eve of the game, I had to address the team meeting. I told Dona that many of these guys - Azhar, Sachin - had been my captains. How was I supposed to tell them what to do and what not to do? I still remember telling her I would keep the meeting short because the longer it went on, the more I'd have to speak. So we wrapped it up in about 15 minutes, and I quickly got a few things across. The next day, we won. In the following match in Jamshedpur, I scored a hundred. Slowly, everything started falling into place," he revealed.
Sourav Ganguly captained India in 49 Tests, winning 21 and losing 13 games. He also captained India in 146 ODIs, winning 76 and losing 65 of them. He also took India to the finals of the ICC Champions Trophy in 2000 and the ICC World Cup in 2003.
