Former India opener Virender Sehwag has placed former Team India captain Sourav Ganguly at the top in terms of captaincy. In the upcoming episode of Sports18’s show Home of Heroes, the former India opener took all the stats into consideration and said that as a captain, Virat Kohli can be one of the best, but he could not build a team like Ganguly.
The Indian cricket team has seen some of the great captains of the game represent the country. From the likes of Sunil Gavaskar to India’s first World Cup winning Kapil Dev to Mohammad Azharuddin to Sourav Ganguly to the most recent being MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli.
Kapil Dev and MS Dhoni are the only two captains to have led the Indian team to the World Cup victory. But, it is the era of the current BCCI President Sourav Ganguly’s reign as the captain of the Indian team that saw a revolution.
While prior to that Indian cricket was not as crazy as it is now. Sourav Ganguly as captain injected some energy into the team. And one who played under Ganguly, Virender Sehwag has put Ganguly as the best captain India ever had.
In a latest episode of the Home of Heroes in Sports18 channel, Sehwag called Sourav Ganguly a youngsters’ captain, who backed the youngsters to do well.
Sehwag added that Sourav Ganguly built a new team, brought in new players and backed them whether they played well or not. He added that he did not saw that during Kohli’s reign as India captain.
“Sourav Ganguly built a new team, brought in new players and backed them through their highs and lows, I doubt if Kohli did that in his tenure,” said Virender Sehwag.
Sourav Ganguly has led the Indian cricket team in 49 Test matches, of which, won 21 matches and lost 13 and 15 of them ended in a draw. Meanwhile, Virat Kohli is the most successful Indian Test captain ever, having led India in 68 Test and has 58.82 win percentage.
While it is right that under Ganguly, many players rose to fame, the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ashish Nehra and even Virender Sehwag himself. But, under Kohli’s reign, Team India probably had the best pace bowling attack, the likes Mohammad Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammad Siraj.
Sehwag rounded off saying that number 1 captain is someone who builds a team and give confidence to the players, whereas, Team India was use making several changes in matches or series’.