Sourav Ganguly is already focusing on a career beyond cricket administration. The former India captain has been denied a second term as president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) after the powers-that-be decided to have 1983 World Cup winning-team member Roger Binny in his place.
The formal takeover will happen during the Board’s annual general meeting in Mumbai on Tuesday. Secretary Jay Shah will continue for another term. Among the others who have been retained from the previous dispensation are Rajeev Shukla, who will stay on as the Board’s vice-president, and treasurer Arun Dhumal, who will be the new IPL chairman.
Speaking for the first time since being denied the chance to file his nomination for the president’s position, Sourav said he has come to terms with the fact that he “can’t be an administrator forever” and “rejections” are a part of life. Without revealing his plans, he made it clear that he would continue to “go for bigger things in future”.
“You can’t play forever. You can’t be an administrator forever, but it’s been fun doing both and seeing both sides of the coin. I will go for bigger things in future,” he said on the sidelines of an event where he was appointed as brand ambassador of Bandhan Bank. “I was a cricketer’s administrator. Yes, you had to make decisions because there’s so much cricket happening, there’s so much money around. There’s women’s cricket, there’s domestic cricket. Yes, you had to take calls at times as an individual,” he said.
Sourav spoke about the high points during his tenure as BCCI chief. “I thoroughly loved it. If you see the last three years, so many good things have happened. IPL during Covid, such difficult times for all of us in the country. We didn’t know how to deal with it. The broadcast rights which went to an all-time high.
“The Under-19 (team) winning the World Cup. I wish the women won the Commonwealth Games gold, they were in a position to beat Australia. “The senior team winning in Australia... Those were great moments as an administrator.
“I hope they do well in Australia because it’s a tremendous cricket team. There’s so much talent, so much power, class in the side,” he said. “You expect them to win all the time... The challenge of being a player is completely different. So you can’t compare both.” Explaining the challenges a cricketer faced with that of an administrator, he explained why a player had little time to correct a mistake.
“I did eight years of administration. I was president of the Cricket Association of Bengal, then became president of the BCCI, all these have tenures and you have to go after finishing it. “But I feel the challenge as a cricketer was a lot more. When you do backroom work, sitting on tables and running the game, you have time to correct things. “But if you nicked a delivery from Glenn McGrath on the first morning of a Test, you are out, you didn’t have the time to correct it... I think that’s the major difference. “But when you do administration you realise that you contribute so much, you could make things better for a cricketer and me being a player who played for a long period of time, I understood that,” he remarked. “For me, life is about faith. Everybody gets tested, everybody gets rewarded, everybody gets rejected. Because that’s the circle of life, but what remains constant is the faith in your abilities which keeps you going,” he said.
Speaking of success, he cited the example of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Life, achievements and progress are about small goals, you don’t become a Sachin Tendulkar, or an Ambani or Narendra Modi in one day. “You have to spend your life, time, days, weeks, months working towards it. That’s the key to success. If you decide that this is my job, this is my life, give everything you have for the rest of your life to be the best.”