Dada's winning note
Manoj Madhavan -
Wednesday, October 08, 2008 5:10 PM
Now that the first of the Fabulous Five has announced his retirement, is this the beginning of the end of an era? All these five mesmerising men played together for the maximum period together. But inspite of their brilliant individual records, one has to admit that they couldn't collectively achieve for India what they promised. Even after a collective presence on the pitch all these years, we still crave for consistency, series victories overseas, another world cup title... and we are still the third ranked team in the ICC test rankings.
Cricket is a team game. Individual records and achievement are no good if you can't produce results as a team. Remember the fearsome West Indian team of the 70s and 80s. The key to their immense success, both at home and abroad, was the fact that the fearsome foursome of the team worked well as a team. And they were consistent with their performances over a long period of time.
Yes, but Sourav Ganguly did teach us Indians a couple of things about leadership. He taught us that to lead a team you need to be shrewd, ignore the best to take the best head on with a long term vision. He taught us that trying to keep everyone happy is not the way of going about things. Instead, he insisted on the boys to believe in their instincts and then backed them to the hilt.
Do we then expect a great sendoff to our first Super Leader? We will have to wait and watch for that.
But, what really comes to mind at this point in time is: Who next? And when?