Life Has No Guarantees, Be It In Sport, Business Or Whatever: Sourav Ganguly Talks About Handling Pressure In International Cricket

Former Indian captain and current BCCI President Sourav Ganguly was one of the finest leaders that the nation had. Sourav Ganguly’s leadership marked the rise of Indian cricket from the nadir of their spot-fixing scandal and transforming into a highly competitive team. But amongst all, the Prince of Kolkata has spoken about the time when he was stripped of Indian captaincy in 2005, lamenting as his.

Sourav Ganguly took over as captain of the Indian team from 2000 and led to the most famous Test series victory against Australia in 2001, followed by the Natwest win against England the year after that. Ganguly also ushered the men in blue to the finals of the 2003 World Cup, where they lost to Australia convincingly.

Along with that, the 48-year old was also a brave leader supporting players like Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Yuvraj Singh, Harbhajan Singh, and MS Dhoni – all of whom became world-beaters. On the batting front as well, the left-handed batsman was a prolific run-getter as he mustered more than 18000 runs in 400 matches across Tests and ODIs.

Pressure is a huge thing in everybody’s life: Sourav Ganguly

Sourav Ganguly revealed that ups and downs are part and parcel of life, be it any field and one gets into the mindset of dealing with it. The 113-Test veteran said that all of us go through different pressures in life and the pressure of playing the first Test is making oneself established and telling people they belong to this level. Ganguly reminded as cricketers become experienced, the pressure is to keep producing those incredible performances and maintain dominance.

“You just have to deal with it. It’s the mindset that you get into. Life has no guarantees, be it in sport, business or whatever. You go through ups and downs. You just have to bite the bullet. Pressure is a huge thing in everybody’s life. All of us go through different pressures. When you play your first Test, it’s the pressure of making yourself established and making the world know that you belong at this level. And when you go to that level after playing many number of matches, it’s about keeping up the performances. A little bit of blip and it doesn’t stop people from scrutinising you and that adds to athletes in a long way,” Ganguly told PTI in an interview.

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