Ganguly attributes success to batting at No. 4

Sourav Ganguly: "I had to bat at five or sometimes six and I missed quite a few hundreds" © AFP Enlarge

Sourav Ganguly, the Man of the Series in India's recent series against Pakistan, has attributed his tremendous success to batting at No.4. Ganguly, mostly a No.5 or 6 batsman, walked in at No.4 in three of the six innings, notching up scores of 46, 239 and 91 from that position, and felt he could have had more hundreds in his career had he batted higher throughout.

"I got to bat at No. 4 in this series and it helped me," he told CNN-IBN, an Indian news channel, after enjoying his most successful three-match series in close to a decade. "I have batted lower down the order for a lot of time and Rahul [Dravid] used to bat at No. 3 and Sachin [Tendulkar] came at four. As a result, I had to bat at five or sometimes six and I missed quite a few hundreds because we did not have wicketkeeper-batsmen like Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik earlier. These guys support people batting at five or six. But me and [VVS] Laxman suffered in terms of getting hundreds," he added.

Ganguly began his Test career at No. 3 but managed only 16 more chances in that position. He has batted at No. 4 in 18 innings but the majority of his career has been from Nos. 5 (84) and 6 (39). He managed a hundred from No. 5 in the second Test of the recent series, a memorable one in front of his home crowd in Kolkata, and was sent in at No. 4 in the second innings to speed up the scoring-rate. An injury to Tendulkar meant he walked in at No. 4 in the final Test too, one where he cracked his career-best score.