Sourav Ganguly Reveals the Decision Which Forced him to Retire from IPL: Cricket Buzz

Cricket News: The former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly’s autobiography ‘A Century is not Enough’ is already popular and a big hit among the cricket lovers. The autobiography highlighted his career off and on the field.

Cricket Buzz: Sourav Ganguly reveals the shock of his life.

The prince of Kolkata has thrown light on his life and cricketing journey though his autobiography. Sourav Ganguly was an integral part of Kolkata Knight Riders set up, but however failed to delivery as player.KKR franchise released dada in the 2011 IPL auctions and surprisingly he went unsold in the auctions.

However, the Pune Warriors bought Sourav Ganguly as their star player Yuvraj Singh was out of the tournament after being diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and went to USA for the treatment. 

Ganguly writes, “In January (2012) I got a call from Saharashri Subrata Roy to come and meet him in Delhi. I went on a Sunday. He got to the point rather quickly: ‘Sourav, I have decided, you will be our captain this season.’”

 “Having done extensive homework, I landed for the auction in Bengaluru. I had arrived a day before to have an important meeting with the management. Next morning I woke up early and had breakfast. As I was getting ready to go down, my doorbell rang. I opened the door and found a pensive-looking Abhijitda standing outside. He said, ‘A decision has come from the Boss that we will not participate in the auction.’”

“I got the shock of my life! What was he saying? I desperately tried to make him understand the impact of such a decision. How irreparable the damage would be. The Boss’ anger with the board may subside afterwards. He said his decision was final and that we needed to get out of Bengaluru as soon as possible. I would be leader of a group which I had neither selected nor would be able to strengthen,” Ganguly writes.

Ganguly also revealed how Subrata Roy forced him to change his decision in team selection, “We eventually came down to Kolkata to play the biggest match of the season against KKR. The media had added their own angle to the match, hyping it as Dada versus SRK. On the day of the match, I entered the team meeting to announce the eleven.”

“Immediately, afterwards I was told that the bosses were looking for me. It was Mr Roy on the phone who wanted to know about the combination that I was playing. He wanted to make certain changes and naturally I had to follow his order,” he continued.

Ganguly writes about how the season got worst and worst and eventually failed to qualify for the play-offs of the IPL 2012, “I wanted to open in this match and take control right from the word go but was advised against it. I was told instead that I had to bat lower down the order. The boss’ idea was that if we were chasing, I could control the middle order with my experience and win the game for Pune. But we lost by seven runs. The game was my last hope in the tournament. From this defeat, we just went down and down. Ironically, the last match of my international career had KKR as the opponents. We lost this match in Pune and the season ended for us.”

How he made his mind up for retiring from IPL, “I told myself that I would not play IPL anymore. I spent nearly a month thinking about it but the voice within told me that my time was up. I had felt the same when I decided to retire from Test cricket. After a month or so I informed my family.” Ganguly writes.