Dada we'll miss you

The maharaja of Indian cricket decieded to take a early retirement and leave the areana.Since his debut in 1992, his has been an unputdownable story with umpteen twists and turns.

In an era dominated by Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara, Ganguly was also one of the best batsman around, both statistically and aesthetically. Each of the 18,000-plus runs he scored, mostly piercing the off-side, showed he knew how to put the bat to the ball.For a batsman, who at one stage was considered almost paraplegic to anything pitched on the leg, Ganguly overcame this flaw as well in the subsequent phase of his career. his fans fondly remember his silky cover-drives and soaring sixes, Ganguly the skipper is likely to overshadow Ganguly the batsman in the history of the game.

Ganguly inherited the team at a time when Indian cricket was struggling to shed the match-fixing slur and by the time he was through with it, Ganguly had established himself as country's most successful captain, courtesy those 21 wins that came under his stewardship spanning 49 Test matches. Once his highly successful partnership with coach John Wright came to an end with the affable Kiwi returning home, Ganguly's subsequent career was marked by umpteen intrigues and irony and the left-hander, credit to his resilience, survived it all.

Ganguly played a key role to get Greg Chappell as the new India coach but soon sparks flew which got him out of the team and he also picked up a fight with his mentor Jagmohan Dalmiya only to make up with him later.

After his comeback, Ganguly hardly put a foot wrong. He returned with an altered batting philosophy which put industry before incendiary and application before aggression.
Turning up late for toss, figuring in many an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations, doing something as outrageous as taking off his shirt and swirling it at the hallowed balcony of Lord's -- Ganguly evoked both admiration and irritation but never boredom.