Former England captain David Gower recently praised the former Indian captain and present Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) President Sourav Ganguly for his positive political skills. Gower feels that Ganguly has the ability to become the head of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in future.
During his playing time, Sourav Ganguly was a great batsman and a great captain who inspired the Indian team to focus on achieving the top success in international cricket, and the team is following it till the present time. After retiring from the game, Ganguly has experienced the administrative roles in the cricket bodies along with commentary and coaching roles.
Ganguly was the President of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) from 2015 to 2019, which he handled very well. However, he stepped down from that position after he became the BCCI President, his present role, last October. Since he became the BCCI President, Ganguly has impressed by handling this role proficiently.
David Gower feels that it is a very challenging role to handle the chair of BCCI President as he needs to be a very deft politician.
Gower said ahead of “Q20”, a unique chat show for the fans presented by ‘GloFans’, “One thing I have learnt over the years is that if you are going to run BCCI, you need to be many, many things. Having a reputation like he (Sourav Ganguly) has is a very good start, but you need to be a very deft politician. You need to have control of a million different things.
“And of course, you need to be responsible for a game that is followed by, I mean, should we say a billion people here in India.”
Gower is pleased to see how Ganguly is handling the BCCI President role in his early period.
The former England captain added, “We all know about the immense following for cricket in India. So it is indeed a wonderful thing to behold. Sourav has the toughest task imaginable in charge of BCCI, but so far I would say the signs are very good. He has listened, given his own opinion and has pulled strings gently.”
Sourav Ganguly is a very, very good man and has those political skills: David Gower
Gower believes that Ganguly has the right attitude to become the head of the ICC as he is successfully handling the bigger role, which is the BCCI President.
Gower continued, “He is a very, very good man and has those political skills. He has the right attitude and can keep things together and will do good job. And if you do a good job as BCCI chief in the future, who knows? But I would actually say the more important job, to be honest, is running BCCI. Being head of ICC is an honour, there is a lot that can be done by ICC, but actually look at the rankings, look at where the power is heading up. BCCI is definitely the bigger job.”