(Cricket news) Sourav Ganguly is a stalwart of Indian cricket, the prince of Calcutta is one of the most influential people in Indian cricket history. 10th November 2000 and 2008 were two very crucial days in his career for two very different reasons.

On 10th November 2000, Sourav Ganguly led the Indian team in Test cricket for the first time. India had just got out of a match fixing scandal and Ganguly was made the full time captain of the side that played against Bangladesh in Dhaka and won by 9 wickets. The god of offside himself scored a well made 84. Ganguly went on to captain India for 49 Test matches and won 21 of them and his contribution to Indian cricket is so much more than these numbers. He completely changed the timid looking Indian side to a team that went head to head with any opposition in the world. Ganguly groomed players like Yuvraj Singh, MS Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra who went on to win so many matches for India. 

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Exactly 8 years after that, Sourav Ganguly walked on the cricket field for the last time as an Indian player. In the 4th and last Test against Australia at Nagpur, Ganguly hung up his international boots. He scored 85 runs in the 1st innings but unfortunately got out for a duck in his last international innings. He ended his career with 18000 plus International runs including 38 centuries. He had a Test average of 42.17 and an ODI average of 41.02. India never lost a match when Sourav Ganguly scored a century. 

Post retirement Ganguly played the IPL for a few years and became the President of the Cricket association of Bengal. Now in 2021, the Maharaja of Indian cricket is the President of the BCCI.