SOURAV GANGULY

The Prince of Kolkata, Sourav Ganguly has been in the news recently for his comeback to the Indian cricket team, both in the ODI and Test versions. This former captain of the Indian cricket team was born on 8 July 1972. He captained the one-day cricket team from 2000 to 2005 after making his one-day international debut against Australia in 1992 and Test debut versus England in 1996.

Fondly called as the Bengal Tiger, Sourav hit the headlines when on India's 1996 tour of England, he scored two centuries in two consecutive matches, including his debut match. His 183 against Sri Lanka at Taunton in the 1999 World Cup, is the highest score by an Indian in the World Cup. Following a series of poor performances, he was dropped from the national side in October 2005. He came back into the national Test squad in November 2006, following the poor run of the Indian team in South Africa. In January 2007, he returned to the Indian ODI team also. Ganguly led India to the World Cup final in 2003, where they lost to the Kangaroos. He has over 10,000 runs in One Day Internationals and over 5,000 runs in Test cricket to his credit and alongwith Sachin Tendulkar formed one of the most successful opening pairs in modern-day cricket.

In 2004, he was awarded the Padma Shri. He is the most successful Indian captain ever in test cricket, having captained India in a record number of 49 Test matches and winning 21 of them. After his comeback to the Indian ODI team, he has played a series of spectacular knocks and was adjudged " Man of the Series" in the series against Sri Lanka.

He is the second fastest player to reach 10,000 ODI runs. He has many records to his name. Alongwith Mahendra Singh Dhoni, he holds the record for the second highest score by an Indian cricketer in an ODI, alongwith the little maestro Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav held the record for the highest first wicket partnership in an ODI match, till it was broken by Jayasuriya and Tharanga. He was the 3rd batsman in international cricket to score a century on debut at Lords. The country is waiting with baited breadth for him to display his amazing pyrotechnics in the current World Cup.