OTD: Sourav Ganguly was born— a legendary captain who shaped new look Team India

A young man from Kolkata came to play his first ever Test and scored a splendid hundred to save team India against England in 1996 at the Lord's. The young man, Sourav Ganguly, turns 53. He was born on July 8, 1972, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal.

In that match against England, Ganguly scored 131 off 301 balls with 20 boundaries. With the help of his century, India scored 429 and squared the match. The left-handed batter, who became one of the best captains in the history of the Indian cricket team, bagged multiple individual records, including a couple of hundreds in consecutive matches from debut.

Sourav Ganguly's first match as captain for India was in the Coca-Cola Singapore Challenge tournament in September 1999, where he led the team in a match against the West Indies. This was during Sachin Tendulkar's absence due to injury. When Ganguly took charge of Team India, the first XI contained players like Sadagoppan Ramesh, Vinod Kambli, Amay Khurasiya, Robin Singh, Laxmi Shukla.

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A vision to create a team for upcoming days

Later, during his leadership, the team was introduced to one after another young talents like Rahul Dravid, Virendra Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, VVS Laxman, Irfan Pathan, Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan, Asish Nehra, Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Ajit Agarkar, and many more. Many would've forgotten that even Mahendra Singh Dhoni also made his international debut during the era of Sourav Ganguly. Sourav Ganguly's captaincy period for the Indian cricket team spanned from 1999 to 2005 in ODIs and from 2000 to 2005 in Tests. He led India in 146 ODIs from 1999 to 2005 and 49 tests from 2000 to 2005. 

During his time as a captain, he tried to shape a new-look team in India, which later won multiple ICC trophies, including the World Cup. When India won the World Cup under MS Dhoni's leadership, the first XI had multiple players who debuted in the blue jersey in Ganguly's time.