Ganguly to retire after Test Series with Australia

This is really a bad news for all the fans of Sourav Ganguly that he is to retire after test series with Australia. For last 12 years the trio of Sourav, Sachin and Dravid dominated the world cricket. Now one of the main pillars of Indiancricket will leave it and become history. At a press conference in Bangalore he said “This will be my last series, Before coming here I spoke to my team-mates and hopefully I will go out with a winning knock”. He is India’s most successful test captain, with India winning 21 of 49 tests played under his captaincy. He also led India into the 2003 World Cup finals. He is considered as one of the most aggressive captains of his time. Ganguly is also credited with having nurtured the careers of many young players who played under him. He is affectionately famous as ”Dada” amongst his fans and team-mates.

Ganguly is the seventh Indian cricketer to have played 100 Test matches.He is currently the 5th highest overall run scorer for India in Tests. He is the fourth Indian to have played in more than 300 One Day Internationals. In terms of overall runs scored in ODIs, Ganguly is the second among Indians after Sachin Tendulkar. His some other records are given below.

His records in World Cricket ::

• Captained India in a record 49 Test matches.
• Led India to a record 21 Test wins.
• His test average has never been less than 40.
• He is one of the 3 players in the world to achieve amazing treble of 10,000 runs, 100 wickets and 100 catches in ODI cricket history, the others being Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya.
• Hold the record of most 200+ ODI partnerships (6 times) along with Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting.
• Holds the record, shared with Sachin Tendulkar, for most 1st wicket ODI partnerships of 175+ runs (7 times).
• Holds the record, shared with Mahendra Singh Dhoni, for the second highest score by an Indian cricketer in an ODI — 183, against Sri Lanka in 1999.
• Held the record, shared with Sachin Tendulkar, for the highest first wicket partnership for India in an ODI match, 258, against Kenya in 2001. This record was bettered by Sri Lankan opening pair of Jayasuriya and Tharanga in 2006 at Headingley.
• Was involved in the first 300 run ODI partnership with Rahul Dravid.
• Sixth on the all time list with 31 man of the match awards.
• He is also the only player to win 4 consecutive man of the match awards in ODIs.
• India’s most successful ODI captain.
• First Indian to score an ODI century against Australia in Australia.
• Highest ODI runs scorer in the world (in a calendar year) in 1997,1999,2000.
• Third in the list of hitting maximum number of sixes in ODIs.

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