A new avatar for Sourav Ganguly

Dileep Premachandran's analysis on Cricinfo and a few other reports in various media outlets indicate that Sourav Ganguly will shed his previous garb of being an all-rounder and mutate into India's newest opener.

Long long ago, so long ago that Tendulkar was captain with the likes of Azhar, Mongia, Sidhu, Rajesh Chauhan and Abey Kuruvilla in his side, Ganguly actually did open in a test, the Bombay test. That series, and the one in Sri Lanka preceding it, would undoubtedly have been a perfect remedy for insomnia patients who watched the games.

After India had secured a 150-run lead, they had to make some quick runs in order to bowl Sri Lanka out on a pretty lifeless track. Ganguly was promoted to open and he scored 12 at nearly a run-a-ball. The bowlers he faced were mighty Chaminda Vaas, just about establishing himself as the first choice seam bowler, and the likes of Pushpakumara (the Waqar Younis wannabe) and Pramodaya Wickremasinghe, none of who bowled anywhere close to 150 kmph.

Tomorrow, in case he opens, he faces Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Sami and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, the first two having the ability to go in excess of 150 kmph a lot of the time.

Of course, the fact that the wicket is far from a green-top means that India could throw Ganguly in as opener and probably still get away with it. Now why is the pitch not a green top? After all, Inzamam did ask for bouncy wickets.

I put that down to the fact that Inzy isn't the only batsman in his side. Not everyone has his ability. He almost certainly had to face a delegation consisting of Salman Butt, Shoaib Malik, Imran Farhat, Younis Khan, Mohd. Yousuf, Shahid Afridi, Kamran Akmal and Abdur Razzaq. The delegation would have demanded to know on what basis Inzy made that statement and recommended to him that he was free to setup similar conditions in his backyard, but that he should layoff from making such irresponsible comments in international cricket.