Dhoni is full of surprises: Ganguly recalls MSD handing over captaincy in last Test
Former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly has recalled the moment when MS Dhoni handed over of the captaincy to him on the last day of a Test match against Australia in November 2008 that also happened to be Ganguly’s last international appearance for the country.
In a conversation with Indian batsman Mayank Agarwal in the latter’s chat show Open Nets with Mayank, Ganguly said, “…he (Dhoni) is full of surprises like his captaincy.” He added that the moment was a bit of a surprise, but he didn’t expect it.
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On the final day of the match in Nagpur, Australia needed 271 runs to win, after losing three wickets. The then captain MS Dhoni handed over the captaincy to Ganguly, who also received a big welcome from his teammates.
“We were winning the Test match and my mind was on retirement. I don’t know what I did for those three, four overs,” Ganguly told Agarwal. Later, India defeated Australia by 172 runs, while the Indian team bid farewell to Ganguly.
Meanwhile, former Indian opener Gautam Gambhir has said Dhoni was fortunate to have a brilliant team that won two ICC World Cups tournaments, an ICC Champions Trophy and bag the number one ranking in Test cricket.
In Cricket Connected show on Star Sports, Gambhir said, “Captaining 2011 World Cup team was very easy for Dhoni because we had players like Sachin, Sehwag, myself, Yuvraj, Yusuf, Virat. So he had got the best team.”
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Stating that Ganguly had worked hard to build the team, Gambhir said Dhoni had won many trophies as a result of it. “Dhoni has been a very lucky captain because he got an amazing team in every format,” Gambhir said.
Last week, in another interview, former opener Wasim Jaffer had said it was Ganguly who had brought players like Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh and Harbhajan Singh to the team and made Virender Sehwag the opening batsman.
