Bringing back memories of his aggression on the cricket pitch, former India captain Sourav Ganguly chose to play straight bat when it came to responding to his critics... This time, Dada’s retort was in connection to the political criticism and the social media trolling he was subjected to following his announcement in Barcelona, Spain, of setting up a steel plant in the state from a dais he shared with Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

“I am an individual. I am not an MP or an MLA or even a councillor. I don’t have political attachments. I will go anywhere I please and I am not answerable to anyone for that,” Ganguly said in Calcutta on Thursday during a function on the soon-to-be released biopic of the Sri Lankan turner Muttiah Muralitharan.

“I will go anywhere I feel it’s good. I get invited by the world. We are credible people with a little bit of popularity. I have no political agenda. Please don’t say all this,” the former skipper said when asked about his response to the political criticism and social media trolling he received after his Spain announcement.

“I would have made that announcement if the programme took place in Delhi or in Calcutta. There’s no difference between Spain or somewhere closer home. A lot of people go to such places. What’s the big deal?” Ganguly snapped back.

Making no attempts to hide his disappointment over the culture of public gossip in the state, Ganguly signed off: “It is only here that I see such excitement and talk of such nature taking place. We don’t live in the animal world. We live in a society where you go and meet people. It doesn’t mean much. I will do whatever I want as long as I know I am doing the right thing.”

Ganguly joined Banerjee and her entourage in Madrid during the Spanish leg of her recently-held overseas official trip to attract investments in business and sports and accompanied her to her subsequent destination in Barcelona. On September 15, speaking at a business conference in the Catalonian city, Ganguly announced plans for construction of a steel plant in Salboni, West Midnapore, which would be an extension of an existing sponge iron factory manufacturing TMT bars in which he holds a stake.

“We started a small steel plant in 2007 and in the next five to six months we will start building our new steel plant in Midnapore. I say this is from practical experience and not because I am with the Hon’ble chief minister and the delegates here, the entire process took only four or five months to complete. We built a state-of-the art facility within a year’s time in the district of Midnapore,” Ganguly had said in praise of the investment climate in Bengal.

Some leaders of the BJP, particularly its state wing, took that gesture with a pinch of salt and criticized the cricketer-turned-businessman for rubbing shoulders with the ruling dispensation of the state. He was also heavily trolled on social media by sympathizers of the saffron brigade.

Responding to Ganguly’s comments, BJP’s Bengal spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya sounded sarcastic: “Sourav Ganguly is an extremely talented batsman. There are no doubts about his talents and his acceptance in people’s minds. Let him stand in front of a mirror and ask himself. He is not a commoner and he is rich since he says that he has been doing business since 2007. Then he must know about the actual state of industry in Bengal and the kind of investments this state is supposedly attracting.”

“We never saw him present in any of the business summits the government organized here since 2007, and here he has suddenly gone all the way to Spain to announce his new business venture in Midnapore. It’s natural that questions will be raised in people’s minds,” Bhattacharya stated.

Trinamul Congress leader Shovandeb Chattopadhyay supplied a counter logic: “Sourav Ganguly is the pride of Bengal. He was present in Spain on an invite from the Chief Minister of this state more as a representative of the sporting fraternity than anything else. He had close connections with CPI-M leader Ashok Bhattacharya in the past. Did we label him as a CPM man then?”

“If Ganguly had made the same announcement from a Narendra Modi dais, then the same party, which is attacking him, would have hailed him like anything,” Chattopadhyay argued.