|| Desk Report ||

Former India captain and current BCCI president Sourav Ganguly opened up the reason why Sachin Tendulkar never took the strike on the first ball of a cricket match.

The partnership of Ganguly and Sourav has widely been amazed by the cricket fraternity. Their partnership has a blasting 8,227 runs in 176 ODI innings for team India with an average of 47.55. No other duo has crossed even 6,000 runs together in ODIs.

But the boy from Bengal has said that it was he who always used to take the first strike when the duo came out as opener for India.

“Yes, he always asked me to take the strike. He always had an answer to that, I used to tell him that sometimes you also face the first ball, always I take the strike,” Souvar Ganguly said.

“He had two answers to that, one if his form was good, he believed that it should continue and he should be at the non-striker’s end, and if he was out of form, then he used to say that I should stay at the non-striker’s end because it takes the pressure,” Ganguly told opening batsman Mayank Agarwal in a video posted by the official Twitter handle of BCCI.

The former left-hander, however, said that Tendulkar did end up taking the strike for once or twice and it was only because Ganguly tried to stand at the non-striker’s end.

“He had an answer to both good and bad form, until and unless you went past him and stood at the non-striker’s end, and the match was already on TV and then he would be forced to take the strike, it did happen once or twice,” Ganguly said.

Tendulkar, dubbed ‘Little Master’ in cricket has the most number of runs in the five-dayer matches scored 15,921 runs with 51 Test centuries, most by any player. The master blaster has also atop the list in ODI with his jaw-dropping accumulated 18,426 runs with 49 tons.

Tendulkar has represented his country in six World Cups in his 24-year-long illustrious international cricket career. Of them, he was part of the 2011 World Cup-winning squad.

Ganguly, in contrast, has been recalled as one of the most successful Indian captains. Under his tenure, India defeated Pakistan in Pakistan for the first time in a Test series. He also led India to the finals of the 2003 World Cup.

Ganguly represented India in 113 Tests and 311 ODIs and scored 18,575 runs across the formats in his international career. He assumed the charge of the powerful stint in Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in October 2019.