Very few used to get what was going through Sourav Ganguly’s mind when he was molding a young Indian team into world beaters. One of the most decorated Indian skippers of all time, the former India captain is perhaps the pioneer of starting mind games in Indian cricket. Even Steve Waugh, the legendary Australia skipper known for his mind games, got a taste of Ganguly’s mind games when the all-conquering Australian team visited India in 2001. Ganguly would repeatedly walk out late for the toss to try and get under the skin of his Australian counterpart. Waugh had later claimed that the incident during the toss affected his team’s performance.
Well, the world will now get to know about Ganguly’s thought process as the legendary cricketer is all set to write a book on mind games in sport although he feels authoring a book is a nightmare. That was the reason which has also discouraged him from writing his autobiography.
“To sit and write, dictate to someone, then correct it and make sure it’s on time with the publisher, it’s a nightmare,” Ganguly said during a book release function.
“I was chased for a long time but I’m not a great writer. I’ve been asked to write a book on mind games in sport. It’s a book on how the player’s mindset is important to develop the sport and I found that pretty boring actually,” he added.
From starting his Test career with a sublime ton at the historic Lord’s to transforming a team of talented but directionless players into a winning combination to his ouster from the team following the fallout with Greg Chappell, Ganguly’s career is tailor-made for an interesting autobiography.
Speaking about that, he said:
“I have not started thinking about my autobiography. Honestly I don’t have time and patience to write about what I’ve done for 15-20 years.”
“When I became captain a lot of people asked me have you read ‘The Art of Captaincy’ by Mike Brearley or the book by Sunil Gavaskar… I said ‘yes only the front page’,” he added.
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