Sunday, January 08, 2006

Ganguly in Numbers

I know it is unfair to try and capture Ganguly's captaincy and its impact on Indian cricket in numbers. His intangible contribution is that he built a new sense of confidence and cockiness within Indian cricket, groomed youngsters and has a big part to play in getting Indian cricket to where it is now and no amount of graphical analysis can do justice to his legacy (sorry if I am wrongly assuming his days as Indian captain in both forms of the game are over).

However, you can't help asking youself this question, if Ganguly is indeed our most successful captain, how good was he? How many did he win, and lose? What was his record against the leading nations, and against the minnows? What was his batting record as captain and how did it compare with Tendulkar, Dravid (in ODI's & Tests), Sehwag (in ODI's) and Laxman (in Tests)? And lastly, how did he compare with his peers like Vaughan, Inzamam, Ponting (!!) and Fleming.

I am sure you have all come across various stats regarding Ganguly, and here is yet another one, genuine attempt on my part to "codify" Ganguly in Black & White (ok, shades of pink, purple and blue)...

First his Captaincy record in Tests:



and in ODIs...



In one of my previous posts, I have briefly touched upon the performance of the Tendulkar & Dravid under Ganguly. I have also done a head-to-head comparision of his performance against Tendulkar.

But here is a more detailed analysis of how Tendulkar, Dravid and Sehwag performed under Ganguly in ODIs highlighting their contribution in games won/lost, etc.



And a similar comparision of Dravid, Tendulkar & Laxman in the Tests ( note this is only their record under Ganguly, so Tendulkar's 194* in India's win Pakistan in 2004 under Dravid does not feature).



Lastly, how did Ganguly compare with respect to his peers in the modern game? I have kept this comparision as a simple Win/Loss record in Tests and ODIs.

Here is his record compared to other modern day captains (with apologies to Chanderpaul, Taibu and Bashar).



And a similar record in ODIs...











As I mentioned in the begining, it is difficult to codify Ganguly in numbers, but at least these numbers should remove (or rekindle) some of the debate around his legacy

Cheers...

7 comments:

Jagadish said...

Saurabh

Really like your stats based analysis. Linking you from Cricket 24x7.

jagadish

Saurabh Wahi said...

Thanks Jagadish...

Anonymous said...

I know you can't keep everyone happy, but I liked the black background better.

Anonymous said...

Really good work.i agree completely with ur thoughts on sourav .he is the complete look on the indian cricket team in 2000.kept faith in the youngsters like sehwag,yuvraj ,harbhajan,nehra,balaji,kaif,Pathan and persisted with them.Now they are the integral part of our side.These peolple should owe some part of their success to ganguly.

Sanjeev said...

Great work, Saurabh. Even by bloggers's standards, you seem to have a lot of free time :)

Would be nice if such a comparison could be done overall.. not just in tests where Ganguly has led.. Can you oblige? :)

Sanjeev
--
http://desipoet.blogspot.com/
http://colossalwasteoftime.blogspot.com/

Saurabh Wahi said...

Sanjeev, its not about how much time you have but how you manage it :-)

Remember, we all have only 24 hours a day.

I will put those stats up probably after the Ind-Pak Test.

Cheers,

Anonymous said...

Awesome analysis

http://worldcricketer.blogspot.com/