Ganguly must learn to think as a captain

There are times when nothing is as important as a touch of inspiration. The best batsmen stumble, stutter and look woefully out of their depth when faced with a situation that's outside the normal. When the going gets tough, different people have different ways of dealing with things. Rahul Dravid is the kind of cricketer who digs deep, spends a long time at the crease and waits for the rhythm to return. Sachin Tendulkar is the kind of man who goes for his strokes, begins to middle the ball with regularity and gets back in stride; but what about Sourav Chandidas Ganguly?

A tremendous knock against some quality opposition in unfamiliar conditions, one that any batsman would be proud of. But hang on a second. Sourav Ganguly is not 'any batsman.' He is the captain of the Indian cricket team.

The Indian captain has a rather strange problem. Despite being in great nick in the shorter version of the game, the skipper regularly runs into problems. When he moved perfectly into place and laced the first ball of the Standard Bank Triangular Tournament to the cover fence the signs were ominous for the opposition. After getting off to a flyer in the company of an unusually scratchy Sachin Tendulkar the skipper seemed to lose direction. After piling on a mammoth 193 opening the batting, Ganguly was dismissed for 127. At that stage Tendulkar did not even have 60 runs to his name.

Now no one can take anything away from a batsman who has made 127 runs in just 126 balls with 14 fours and four sixes. A tremendous knock against some quality opposition in unfamiliar conditions, one that any batsman would be proud of. But hang on a second. Sourav Ganguly is not 'any batsman.' He is the captain of the Indian cricket team.

As captain, Ganguly reacted to the situation before him in a manner that can only be described as instinctive and short-fused. Instead of playing the situation on merit, Ganguly let the game flow out of India's control. With nine wickets in hand and 193 runs coming off 35.2 overs at a run rate of 5.5 India were well set to put a 300 plus score on the board and pile the pressure on the South Africans. Strangely however, the fall of the first wicket saw Rahul Dravid trudge out to the middle. The momentum was broken immediately, a couple of quick wickets fell and India fell well short of the mark. Add to this the fact that Shiv Sunder Das, making his limited overs debut was asked to bat at number seven and it is clear that Ganguly was at least a bit confused.

Why was Ajit Agarkar sent in to bat ahead of Das? A stab in the dark perhaps. Does this mean the Indian captain is really at a loss for ideas or a plan? Hardly. It's the captaincy equivalent of what Ganguly does when he faces a few too many dot balls on the trot. He waltzes down the track and gives the ball an almighty belt. And that is something that hardly ever achieves the desired result. What Ganguly needs to do, and quickly, is separate his captaincy from his batting.

To carry the team with him, Ganguly must dig deep and play himself into a position of strength. There are no short cuts to beating a team like South Africa and this Indian team knows that. To defy all odds, a stated aim of Ganguly, and beat South Africa in their own backyard, the captain has to realise that the fight will be a long hard one. A sustained campaign of high intensity cricket will not just surprise the South Africans, but will get India back to winning ways.