Prince of Kolkata : Sourav Ganguly

The Imperious Indian and Prince of Kolkata
Sourav Chandidas Ganguly, affectionately known as Dada is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian national team. Currently, he is a cricket commentator and President of the Editorial Board with Wisden India. He is regarded as one of India’s most successful captains in modern times.
He started his career by playing in state and school teams. Currently, he is the 5th highest run scorer in One Day Internationals (ODIs) and was the 3rd person in history to cross the 10,000 run landmark, after Sachin Tendulkar and Inzamam Ul Haq.  In the 1999 Cricket World Cup, he was involved in a partnership of 318 runs with Rahul Dravid, which remains the highest overall partnership score in the World Cup tournament history. Ganguly was awarded the Padma Shri in 2004, one of India’s highest civilian awards. He returned to the National team in 2006, and made successful batting displays. . Ganguly joined the Kolkata Knight Riders team as captain for the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket tournament in 2008.
The left-handed Ganguly was a prolific One Day International (ODI) batsman, with over 11,000 ODI runs to his credit. He is one of the most successful Indian Test captains to date, winning 21 out of 49 test matches.Sourav Ganguly is the most successful Indian test captain in overseas with 11 wins. An aggressive captain, Ganguly is credited with having nurtured the careers of many young players who played under him, and transforming the Indian team into an aggressive fighting unit. He was awarded with the Banga Bibhushan Award on 20 May 2013.
Ganguly was part of the Indian team that competed in the 1999 Cricket World Cup in England. During the match against Sri Lanka at Taunton, India chose to bat. After Sadagoppan Ramesh was bowled, Ganguly scored 183 from 158 balls, and hit 17 fours and seven sixes. It became the second highest score in World Cup history and the highest by an Indian in the tournament. His partnership of 318 with Rahul Dravid is the highest overall score in a World Cup and is the second highest in all ODI cricket.
Ganguly commented that David Gower was the first cricketer to attract him to the game. He loved Gower’s style and used to watch old videos of him playing. Other cricketers who had an influence on him are: David Boon, Mohinder Amarnath, Kapil Dev and Allan Border.  Ganguly is a left-handed batsman whose runs came primarily from the off-side. Debashish Dutta, author of Sourav Ganguly, the maharaja of cricket, commented that throughout his career, "Ganguly played off-side shots such as the square cut, square drive and cover drive with complete command." Rahul Dravid has called Ganguly "...next to God on the off-side."