Choosing Between Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh Was Toughest Part of my Captaincy: Sourav Ganguly
Sourav Ganguly reminisced about his time as Team India captain and spoke about the various 'hurdles' he faced while driving the team towards success during his tenure.
Sourav Ganguly on Saturday, re-lived memories of his tenure as Team India captain and revealed how he dealt with some of his best players in the side.
"Lot of people think captaincy is an easy job to do but when you have greats like Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, VVS Laxman and more, you have a lot of answering to do," Ganguly said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
With two stalwarts- Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh- fighting for the lone spinner's spot in the Indian side for most overseas tours, Ganguly's job wasn't an easy one.
"My biggest challenge in that era was to tell either of Harbhajan or Kumble that you're not playing in overseas condition," Ganguly said.
"If I tell Anil in seaming conditions in England that Harbhajan has 50 wickets in a year, you take a break in this game, he would say I've got 400 Test wickets," he added.
Talking further about Anil Kumble, who went on to pick 965 international wickets in his 18-year-long career, Ganguly narrated another incident when he pleaded to stop the Indian leggie from considering retirement.
"I remember in Brisbane, we had to leave Anil out of the game. After the match he came to me and said I want to go back and retire. He had so much pride and was such a champion that sitting out hurt him. I had to somehow hold his hands and say Anil I'll get you to play, don't worry."
Apart from leading his side from the front, a key aspect of Ganguly's captaincy was to answer questions from several 'disgruntled' players and keep them going.
"There was a time I asked Laxman to open and he refused. I would ask Anil to sit out once in a while and I had to answer ten questions. Another big challenge was to handle Ashish Nehra. He was a dear friend and every time I would leave him out because I was worried about his ankle, I knew the doorbell would ring in the night after the game. I had to give him an explanation."
Despite all these 'issues', Ganguly led the team to most number of overseas victories and went down in history as one of the best captains of Indian cricket.