Why I’m glad Saurav Ganguly has come out of retirement

Ganguly, when he was the God of the off-side

“I don’t plan to retire. I will play for India as long as I am selected. If I’m dropped from the Indian team, I’ll play for Bombay. If I’m dropped from the Bombay team, I’ll play for Dadar Union. If I’m dropped from the Dadar Union team I’ll play galli cricket near my house. I’ll play for as long as I can. I’ll never retire.”

This was Sunil Gavaskar’s reply to a journalist who once asked him when he planned to retire. This may have been in a cricket magazine called Sportsweek I used to subscribe to as a child. This was long before the internet, I wasn’t able to Google up the reference. This was also from a time before sportmen had handlers, or image consultants, telling them what to tell journalists to maximize their brand endorsement income. These words probably were a good reflection of what Sunil Gavaskar thought at the time.

Gavaskar drives through the covers

Those words stayed in my mind for so long because that comment, that attitude, epitomizes why Sunil Gavaskar was my first ever hero. By believing that the game was worth playing no matter how humble the setting, Gavaskar was sticking up for every amatuer cricketer, everywhere. Gavaskar was raising a fist for every kid who has stepped up to the crease in a schoolyard, risking humiliation in front of an army of snarky fourteen year olds, for the pleasure of feeling the thonck of bat on ball. The greatest batsman in the world was effectively punching gloves with every Mumbaikar who has ever burnt up a weekend playing Kanga league cricket in the monsoon rain on Shivaji Park maidan, or every Yorkshireman who has braved the bitter cold and howling winds of an English May to play for his village.

There have, of course, been many avatars of Sunil Gavaskar, avatars who don’t always see eye to eye. The sulky blocker who made 36 not out off 174 balls against England in the 1975 World Cup probably wouldn’t shake hands with the furious belligerent of 1983 who scored 100 off 94 balls, in a test match, facing Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding, to equal Sir Donald Bradman’s record of 29 test centuries.

Ultimately, the avatar who refused to retire didn’t win the battle for Gavaskar’s soul. Gavaskar did retire on a high. He stepped down as the Indian captain after winning the 1985 World Championships in Australia, with Ravi Shastri driving the team around the MCG in his Audi. He retired from playing active cricket in 1987, after scoring a century at Lord’s in a five day game to celebrate the MCC’s bicentenary. Gavaskar doesn’t live in Dadar any more, I don’t think he plays galli cricket nowadays outside his swank apartment on the Worli sea face.

Ganguly b Malinga 16

The Indian player who inherited the best of Gavaskar's spirit is Saurav Ganguly. More than any other player since Sunny, Ganguly is the one who is obviously animated by a fierce pride and an entirely irrational passion for the game.

Saurav's stubbornness, his irrationality, that refusal to just accept reality, is what made it possible for him to take charge of the Indian team after the horrors of Azharuddin, and turn it into a team we were proud to support. That same stubbornness, the same refusal to accept reality was on display yesterday. Saurav's IPL team, the Pune Warriors,were up against the Mumbai Indians. Saurav was awful. He made a laboured 16 off 24 balls before Lasith Malinga cleaned him up. What made it even harder to watch was that he clearly was trying hard, and his crawl probably cost his team the game.

Yet, despite that predictable awfulness, I loved him for having the burning desire to come and play. Saurav will play for as long as they let him. He doesn't need to. His image consultants will tell him not to. He doesn't need the glory or the money. He could settle for a safe job, as a coach, or commentator, or "mentor". But for India's captain Saurav the lion heart, yeh dil maange more.

Whether Pune Warriors did the smart thing by inviting Saurav to come out of retirement and captain their team is an entirely different question. That is a topic for another day.