If you are Indian and born in the nineteenth century you must be very well knowing about the fiasco between Sourav Ganguly and Greg Chappel due to which Ganguly was dropped from Indian squad. The event that was published by media was like this Sourav Ganguly asked the BCCI and more or less forced them to hire Greg Chappel as the coach of Indian team. BCCI hired and later Greg Chappel himself asked then selector Kiran More to drop Ganguly from the Indian squad due to fitness issues. The whole Bengal was furious on Chappel and obviously had removed possibly many more good chapters in Ganguly's career. Later Rahul Dravid was made the captain. But is this the real story.
Lets go a little back from the start of the story. Azharuddin was the captain at that time of Indian team when many players of the team including Azharuddin was found guilty of match fixing and removed from the team. Ganguly was named the captain. Jagmohan Dalmiya former CAB president and BCCI head at that time supported this decision. Later Ganguly looked to built a team from young players who were talented but least proven themselves including Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaheer, Harbhajan, Nehra etc. The result of the decisions by Ganguly was far good and can be seen from their records. Ganguly himself was a match winner along with Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman, Srinath and Kumble had made a formiddible side who was doing good all across the world.
But Ganguly has a reputation that he can fight for anything that he feels good. Some of the events for this judgement are fighting with the selectors for these young players or be it make Steve Waugh wait for toss in a test match at Eden's or even the famous taking off his shirt in Lords after Natwest final. So after a good run in CWC 2003 where India reached final but Ganguly was even not satisfied with that, he wanted the trophy in his hands. Later he picked few more very good young players in the team against the selectors be it Gautam Gambhir, Irfan Pathan or even Mahendra Singh Dhoni. India was a bit struggling with form in late 2004s but team was excellent and always has the capability to come back and perform the best.
But the time came of the team being getting dismantled. It started with Jagmohan Dalmiya getting removed as BCCI president and in coming of Sharad Pawar from Mumbai as the president in 2005. He wanted to have his control over the Indian cricket and even bring most players from Mumbai. He knows that while Ganguly is there it is not possible and even Ganguly almost forcibly brought Chappel as the head coach. Here started the politics in the BCCI and with some discussions with Chappel and More, Pawar asked More to remove Ganguly from the team and mention that Chappel doesn't wanted Ganguly due to fitness. It was Chappel's and More's job so they did as they were said. Hence Ganguly was removed from the squad.
But again ganguly was always a fighter, he fighted hard to come back and against all the odds even the BCCI against him he made a comeback and played 2007 CWC under the captaincy of Rahul Dravid. But by the time enough damage was done to the team and in 2007 India exited from the first round. Later in 2008 Pawar also got removed from the BCCI president. By this time some of the older players like Ganguly, Dravid, Kumble and Laxman had to leave their dreams of winning a World Cup.
Later Dhoni became the captain and with set of new ideas but effective ones led a team with old and young to win the CWC in 2011. But the contribution of Ganguly in finding the players of the team like Zaheer, Sehwag, Harbhajan, Gambhir, Yuvraj or even Dhoni can never be forgotten who laid the foundation of the victory.
