Maharaj to Join Yuvraj: Sourav Ganguly is back

"I'm Back": Sourav Ganguly is penciled in as the replacement for an injured Ashish Nehra in the Pune Warriors squad

Don’t get shocked if you see a sudden rise in the fanpage of Pune Warriors India on Social networking sites. This is bound to happen as the prince of Kolkata, Sourav Chandidas Ganguly is back in the IPL. Sourav Ganguly is joining Sahara’s team Pune Warriors India. Dada is replacing injured Indian Pacer Aasish Nehra. Sourav Ganguly was with Kolkata Knight Riders in the first three seasons of IPL. He led the side in the 1^st and 3^rd edition of the league. The side finished 6^th on both the occasion when he was the captain and finished last when Brendon McCullum was the captain. Not just the people of Kolkata but all the Dada fans across country are extremely happy to see him back.

Sourav Ganguly’s base price at the IPL auction was $400,000. But none of the franchisee bought him. Even on the 2^nd day of the auctions people thought that if not KKR, Pune will buy him as Sourav shares a very good relations with Sahara’s owner and he is also one of the directors of the Sahara’s Sports Board. But that also didn’t happen and Dada remained unsold. In between the nes had come that Kochi was interested to sign Sourav couple of times. First when Laxman faced a back injury and then when Srilankan players were suppose to go early from the IPL but Dada wasn’t fortunate enough on both the occasions. Ganguly remained unsold in the auctions not because of the cricketing reasons. His personal performance in the IPL 2010 was really good. He was the 4^th highest run getter of the league with a decent stike rate. He was ahead of the players like McCullum, Gayle, Rohit Sharma, Murali Vijay,etc. He scored 493 runs in 14 matches at an average of 37.93 and with the strike rate of 118.66. He also took couple of out standing catches.

The Maharaj of Indian Cricket is set to join Yuvraj. It will be good to see Ganguly playing under Yuvraj, who was groomed by Sourav Ganguly when he was captain. PWI is currently at the bottom of the table by winning only 2 out of 8 matches. Yuvraj has looked pretty ordinary and it will be good learning opportunity for him as well as he’ll get a chance to play as a captain with India’s Best captain ever.

Brand KKR will surely be affected by this. We have already seen empty stands at the Eden Gardens in IPL-4 which generally doesn’t happen. In the first home game of KKR at Eden vs Deccan chargers, there were only 19,000 spectators. The management had to slash the ticket prices to attract people. We are yet to see a full house Eden Gardens. Even the merchandise sales has been affected. KKR was on the top when it comes to the revenue from merchandise in the first 3 edition but now they have lost their way. This time KKR has gone down to 4^th position with only 13% of the total IPL team jersey purchases. Fortunately for SRK, KKR is playing a game vs PWI but not in Kolkata otherwise Eden would have been packed supporting Pune Warriors. Even IPL’s TRP rating may go slightly high as people will be looking forward to see Dada back in action.

Sourav Ganguly hasn’t played any competitive cricket for more than a year now. So we don’t expect any big or fast inning from him. He has proved himself in the cricket and he doesn’t need to prove anymore. He is back again because he still loves the game as much as he used to love way back in 1996. For that, I salute his fighting spirit.

ALL THE BEST DADA….