Ganguly's catch

He’d been plodding with the bat, hadn’t come on to bowl and as the chase unfolded he saw his team once again being slowly, inevitably overhauled by confident opponents. In the stands, in the press box, in front of those thousands of TV sets in Kolkata, the murmurs grew in sound. “Ganguly’s too old for this game…Ganguly’s lost the fire…Ganguly should be dropped.”

And then, as so often in the past, Ganguly had his moment of defiance, his two-fingered proletariat salute to the world’s richest league. Sourabh Tiwary miscued his shot but it still seemed to be going past Ganguly at short extra cover; the fielder stretched, then stretched some more – the crowd held its breath and you could almost hear the old sinews creak – and, as the ball seemed to have eluded him, his right hand found that extra millimetre and held on. He fell down, momentarily stunned by what he’d done, then got up, checked to see everything was in place, and got on with the game.

The game at hand was lost; the larger game is there to be won, and you can be sure Ganguly - who now has a catch of the match award to his name, who'da thunk it? - will be battling till the last ball.