The history of a cricketing nation is divided into multiple eras. Each era is marked by a change of guard as a new leader takes over the realms of captaincy and tries to get the best out of a core group of players who form the nucleus of the side. A new leader ushers in a new approach and style to lead his men with a common objective to win games for his country.
With the turn of the century, Sourav Ganguly took over the mantle of Indian cricket from Mohammad Azharuddin, India’s long-standing skipper of the 90’s. Sourav Ganguly brought about a paradigm shift in how India played their test cricket. India played their cricket with a new found resolve and self-belief. Ganguly instilled a sense of resilience and aggressiveness to take on the best test sides of that time. The Indians improved upon their dismal overseas record by registering impressive test victories over formidable oppositions in their own backyard.
Ganguly was quite the opposite to his illustrious predecessor Azhar in his leadership style and persona. While Azhar was calm and composed in his demeanor, Ganguly was quite the expressive bloke, both in victory and defeat. If Azhar made India into a fortress at home, Ganguly made them into the combative unit in overseas conditions.
Ganguly had an eye for young spotting talent and backed them to the hilt. The likes of Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and Mohammad Kaif all blossomed into world class cricketers under Ganguly’s mentorship. Much of Ganguly’s success has to be largely attributed to Kiwi coach John Wright, with whom he forged a brilliant partnership. John played the perfect foil to ‘Dada’ as his cricketing acumen with Ganguly’s natural instinctive leadership proved to be a potent think tank.
The combination was instrumental in developing match winning tactics for the ‘Men in Blue’ and the results were there to show as Ganguly become one of the most successful Test captains of India. But as the famous cricket quote goes ‘A captain is as good as his team’. So Ganguly was lucky to have a plethora of cricketing greats under his command.
The batting line-up hailed as the ‘Fab Five’ was perhaps the strongest India ever had in their test history. Sehwag the ‘Slayer’, Dravid the rock solid ‘Wall’, Sachin the prolific batting maestro, Laxman the elegant stroke maker and Dada himself as the ‘Lord of the Offside’. He had a potent spin attack in Kumble and ‘Bhajji’ and had the luxury of fine swing bowlers who were lethal on overseas conditions.
So let us look at the best Test eleven which played for India under Ganguly’s captaincy (October 2000 to 2005)
For selecting my team, I have taken the period of October 2000-2005 as the same time frame corresponds to Ganguly’s captaincy. I have only considered those players for selection who played at least ten test matches during that era and made a significant impact by delivering consistent performances with bat or ball.
1. VIRENDER SEHWAG – VIRU
Virender Sehwag was arguably India’s greatest match winner with the bat in the history of Indian test cricket. Sehwag was perhaps the most destructive opening batsman in the modern era of test cricket. An attacking opener, Sehwag redefined the way openers played test cricket. He had a very simple and well-organized technique, brilliant hand-eye coordination and sublime timing which were the key ingredients for him to unleash an array of destructive strokes.
India won many test match on the back of Sehwag’s spectacular knocks which were laced with boundaries and sixes. ‘Viru’ simply took the game away from the opposition by decimating attacks all over the world with his brutal yet eye-catching stroke play. What made Sehwag even more special was his ability to score consistently at the highest level given the pace at which he batted.
Test Record: Oct 2000-2005
Matches – 36 Runs – 3181 Average – 55.80 100’s – 10 50’s – 9