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Oh Kolkata!
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 Phew, thank goodness he’s back, Sourav ‘Dada’ Ganguly I mean.In Indian cricket, nostalgia these days means a max of 12-16 months. Yes, just over a year back the appalling batting form of the then Indian captain and the shocking results of the team had become the laughing stock of the nation. Remember all those Ganguly jokes doing the rounds via SMS and e-mail? Now suddenly he is being touted—at least in some parts of the country—as the saviour of our team. Puh-lease! I mean, scoring a century (after a gap of exactly a year) in a first-class match against a second-string North Zone team and then 43—yes 43!—against a third-rate Punjab attack does not exactly constitute a roaring return to form! But it’s been enough to get him back to the national squad after a gap of 10 months. Then again, the man has the luck of the devil. His so-called return to form has coincided with a depressing six-month period of Indian cricket where the team has barely won anything. The seniors are flopping, the youngsters are a huge disappointment. So what do we do? Why, call back the discards of course! Then there is the politics of the whole business. To hear Brinda Karat demanding the return of the Bengal Pussycat was really laughable. I mean, what exactly does that woman know about cricket? And to think the Speaker of the House has been adding his stentorian voice to the same demand—it makes one wonder where Indian cricket has come to. As for Kolkata’s sports journalists, it’s as if they have had a single point agenda ever since their favourite was dumped after the tour of Pakistan earlier this year. Then again, make that a double-point agenda. Pray for the Indian batsmen to fail, thus making way for the return of their one-and-only. Well, their prayers have been answered. But of all places to make a comeback--that too for a batsman whose imitation of a cat on a hot tin roof while facing the quickies is known all over the cricket world—South Africa is really going to be a nightmare. One Kolkata daily in its editorial said for SG to return to cricket in South Africa is like the feelings of a man watching his mother-in-law drive his new BMW off a cliff! Think I’m exaggerating about the journalists? The prominent (Bengali) editor of an English daily in Delhi wrote the other day that the front pages of Bengali papers have been filled almost every day with various stories of SG, many bordering on the fiction! As for the hostility of Kolkata’s so-called sports lovers, remember the ODI against South Africa late last year at the Eden Gardens where India under Rahul Dravid lost by 10 wickets? No wonder the captain commented the next morning on landing in Mumbai: “It’s good to be back in India!” So cricket after all is about individuals and not the team, at least for sections of the country. Then again, let’s all welcome SG’s recall. The whole sorry business has been hanging over the team like a toxic cloud for months. At least that’s all over now. If he succeeds, it will be great for Indian cricket; if he fails, well that will end the debate once and for all and perhaps he will put us all out of our agony by gracefully retiring. Or is that asking for too much?
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