New Delhi: Former captain of the Indian team, Sourav Ganguly has given many stars to the country who stepped into the team under his captaincy and later reached the pinnacle of greatness.
The biggest of these names is Mahendra Singh Dhoni, who later took Ganguly’s legacy to a new level and became India’s most successful captain.
Joey Bhattacharya, former director of the IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders, has said that Dhoni had come in the eyes of Ganguly on his first tour.
Bhattacharya said on Gaurav Kapoor’s Podcast 22 Yarnas, “I remember I was on a flight to Bangladesh in 2004 and Ganguly was telling me that we had a new whip batsman. You should see it. Dhoni will become a big star. ”
The 2004 Bangladesh tour was Dhoni’s first tour with the Indian team. However, he could not impress on this tour and was runout to zero in the first match.
He was then re-selected in the squad for the series played against Pakistan.
In this series, Ganguly had sent Dhoni in his place at number-3 and Dhoni had made headlines in international cricket by playing an innings of 148 balls from 123 balls in ODIs played in Visakhapatnam.
Bhattacharya said, “One of the things I think he was brilliant, he would see you and he would come to know that you do not have talent.”
He added, “If you have talent, they will support you. It does not mean for them that if you do not score, then you fail, it does not matter to them because they know that you have the ability and when the day is yours, you will score. ”
