Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar are the most successful openers for the Indian national cricket team, during their time of 1996 till 2007, Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar opened for almost 136 matches for the Men In Blues, and they have scored 6,609 runs as an opener with an average of 49 in the One-day International cricket.
Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar pair are among the best in the world, later Sachin Tendulkar paired with Virender Sehwag and Sourav Ganguly also paired with Sehwag and did a great job for the team and also in the present scenario Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan are also successful, but no other pair match up with the level of Sourav Ganguly and Sachin Tendulkar.
But some rumors are still there, that whenever Sourav and Sachin stepped on the field to open, Sachin always asked Sourav Ganguly to play the first ball, in a chat show with the current Indian player Mayank Agarwal, the President of BCCI Sourav Ganguly reveals that.
In a recent Video, which Mayank uploaded on his twitter he asked Sourav Ganguly:
“Did Sachin paaji force you to take the strike when you opened the batting in ODIs?”
In Reply, Ganguly voiced:
“Always, he did. He had an answer to that. I used to tell him ‘sometimes you also face the first ball. I always face the first ball’. He had two answers for that,”
Sourav Ganguly added:
“One, he believed if his form was good, he should continue and remain at the non-striker’s end. And when his form wasn’t good, he would say ‘I should remain at the non-striker’s end, as it takes the pressure off me’. He had an answer for both good form and bad form,”
Ganguly also said he used to do some trick to play Sachin Tendulakr the first ball of the Innings, and said:
“Until and unless some days, you walk past him and stood at the non-striker’s end, and he was already on TV, and he would be forced to be at the striker’s end. That has happened once or twice, I went past him and stood at the non-striker’s end,”