From a very young age I used to follow various sports like
Cricket, Football, Hockey and Tennis. Also because of my reading habits I used
to read a lot about these sports in the newspapers, old journals and books from
local library. There was always a sporting culture in my home and both my
parents love to catch a few games on TV, especially Cricket, time to time.
Being an egoist from my childhood, I always relate myself
with some team or other. I always have a favourite team of mine and for most
often than not I am one of those extreme, creepy supporters who can do anything
for the team they support. That can include anything from waking up at 3 in the
morning, offering sweets to God (as bribe or ‘Mannat’ whatever you call it may
be), and after team’s win to indulge in
fight with random people in the streets in support of your favourite team.
I passionately support the Indian cricket team for as long
as I can remember, may be except a brief period in 2006, but that’s a different
story and I can never understand how so many Indian people could not support
their own cricket team and constantly abused the team and the players. Yeah
there are those bullshits like ‘Patriotism is crap’, ‘This is BCCI’s team and
many others but seriously man when you have a cricket team of your country who
are 3 times world champion, why the hell would you go and support teams like
England and West Indies? And then, someone once told me, “I support Pakistan, I
do not like Indian team and I will not support whites who are racist!!” Why not
Sri Lanka then I thought, but also realized that the possible reason could be
that they are too dark than his liking!
Except the Indian cricket team, the other teams I support
passionately are Mohun Bagan Athletic Club, Brazilian National Football Team
and Manchester United Football Club. The order is not necessarily based on the
level of passion; it’s more to do with a chronological order of me becoming a
fan of these 3 football clubs.
My family is a Mohun Bagan family, my parents support Mohun
Bagan and it must be sometime around 1989-90, when the famous Bengali weekly
‘Anandamela’ came up with a special issue focusing on Kolkata Football. My
father used that one to explain about Mohun Bagan club, the first Indian club
to beat the foreigners to win the 1911 IFA Shield. He explained the importance
of Mohun Bagan club and their status in Indian football. More than 20 years
have passed and the love is still intact despite of a relatively tougher time
for last three & a half years.
At the time of 1990 Football World Cup, I was only 6-7 years
old but even in that age I was an avid reader and read as many reporting and
articles I could about World Cup football and its history. Based on those books
and very few available old football clips I found the Brazilian national team
to be most attractive but most importantly Brazil has a rich history of their
football and I was an instant fan of Brazilian greats like Pele, Garrincha and
Zico. And by the time 1994 World Cup came I became as passionate Brazil fan as possible
and I consider myself lucky to watch two of Brazil’s 5 World Cup triumph in the
5 world cups I have seen. The next one will be in the country itself and
although the squad is not very strong and lacks co-ordination I still hope for
a magic in their country where World Cup is returning after 64 years!!
And then there is the Manchester United Football Club, one
of the world’s most famous football clubs along with likes of Real Madrid,
Barcelona, AC Milan and Bayern Munich. Now call me a ‘Glory hunter’ or whatever
you may like, but the fact is that I did not start supporting Man United from
first day of my life. No one of us could, these are foreign football clubs and
even till mid 90’s it was very difficult to even get news regarding these
clubs. It was early days of ESPN/Star Sports in India and except the foreign
tours of Indian cricket team what they would show was Baseball and basketball.
And for people in Kolkata, football meant the worldwide frenzy which comes once
every four years with World Cup football.
I read about Matt Busby and the Munich plane crash of 1958
and how that team had the potential to world-beater and how by fate they become
part of one of the biggest sporting tragedies of the century. But most of my
knowledge was based on history and frankly in the first half of 90s, I, as a 10 year old boy did not care much about
what was happening in English football
And then EPL started coming to India through ESPN and I
followed those matches, watched post match shows, I knew about United, learnt
about other teams, Liverpool, the Arch enemy, Arsenal, the other power house,
Man City, the noisy neighbours and then
I started hearing two names regularly. Alex Ferguson and David Beckham, both
were part of Manchester United football club. David may not be a great player
but he was a star and Ferguson was a well respected football coach and a great
tactician. I started liking them,
started liking the club and then came 1999.
1999 was arguably the best year for Manchester United in the
Ferguson era. Not only the treble but that night in Camp Nou which made 1999 a
legendary year in United history and I got more and more attracted to the team
which had both great footballing tradition and a very strong current team with Ferguson
in the helm.
My passion for United increased gradually. On the other hand, early 2000 witnessed a very interesting growth of Indian cricket team. Dravid and Ganguly were
moving towards their legendary status and new youngsters like Yuvraj, Sehwag,
Harbhajan and Zaheer coming up. So most of my spare time was dedicated to
cricket, Indian team and more specifically on Saurav Ganguly, the stylist
southpaw who changed the face of Indian cricket with his unmatched passion and
fighting spirit.
Post 2006-07, the passion in cricket went down somewhat. It
could be a result of the overkill by ICC and BCCI by arranging meaningless
series and tournaments. Also the team was changing. Lots of new players were coming, Old warhorse
like Ganguly got retired in 2008, Dravid
decided to play only test matches, IPL and other private leagues came to make
cricket more of a product than a sport. And with all these my dedication for
football precisely for United was increasing.
Now pls don’t get me wrong here ILP lovers. I am not saying
IPL is bad, or do not follow cricket nowadays (I can challenge you in a cricket
quiz any time, ok not everyone… like Abhishek Mukherjee), I watch cricket as
much as I can, I was ecstatic with KKR’s win last year but at the same time my
focus on football and United grew over the year.
I did lots of study on United players and especially on Sir
Alex. I Read about him, got ‘Football- Bloody Hell’, his famous biography … The
more I read about him my respect for him grew day by day. Then interestingly I slowly realized that two
of my most respected sporting icons have many things in common.
Yes, Sourav Ganguly and Sir Alex Ferguson may be from two
completely different sporting backgrounds but there are a few common threads
which connect them together.
Firstly, both Sir Alex and Sourav could not fulfil their
potential as players but became great leaders and motivators. Sir Alex with 6
clubs in his 17 year long career and 171 goals could never play for his country
and as a player he could only be called modest.
Ganguly on the other hand was much successful as a player
with more than 18,000 runs in international cricket is arguably the best left
handed batsman India has ever produced and one of the best left handed batsmen
in his generation. But I personally feel
that we did not see his best performance and he could have achieved much more
specially as a test match batsman, but as we know their leadership skills which
are pretty unmatched in style. And obviously the impressive results they could
achieve with the limited resources they mostly had.
Secondly, both of them were masters of working with a young
team. Ganguly is considered to be the first Indian captain to build a
successful team with young upcoming players like Sehwag, Harbhajan, Kaif,
Yuvraj, Zaheer and even Mahendra Singh Dhoni in a later stage. No one can
ignore the support he provided for some of these players in their initial
not-so-successful phases of career. These youngsters could not get the World
cup in 2003 but in 2011 when Sourav was long gone, the team that won the World
cup had 5 of the above mentioned players as the mainstays in that team.
Even Ferguson did the same during his entire managerial
stints and his legendary ‘Class of 92’ included Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Paul
Scholes and Neville brothers who in their late teens at that time became
stalwarts for their club and country for the next decade. Even Wayne Rooney and
Christiano Ronaldo both were around 17 years old when Ferguson signed them and
made them two of the biggest names in world football. Not only nurturing the
young talent, but the way he supported them in their bad time, especially
Beckham during post infamous red card in 1998 world cup and Ronaldo after the
‘Wink’ incident in world cup 2006 made Ferguson different from other great
managers.
I do not like many Shah Rukh Khan Movies but one of them
which I consider relatively better is ‘Chak De India’ and there was a dialogue
in the movie something like, “Harr team mein ek Gunda rahata hain, aur iss team
ka Gunda main hnu”. This dialogue doesn't only refer to the legendary
blockbuster ‘Gunda’ by the master Kanthi Shah it is also quite true for both
Sourav and Sir Alex.
Both of them are great leaders and the common trait in their
leadership style was the fact that at their times as coach or captain they
wanted to be the person who should call the shots, who should be on the
spotlight. Because of that there were multiple times in their career when they
got into tussle with fellow players, coach or other management staffs in the
team.
Sourav always had issues with players from other teams and
umpires, most famously the ‘Late for Toss’ incident with Steve Waugh. The nadir
reached at the time of Greg Chappell being Indian coach, Ganguly was the main
person behind Greg’s appointment as India’s coach post John Right but within
few months the relationship grew sour and finally ended with Ganguly getting
dropped from the team due to his poor form and some non-cricketing reasons.
Ferguson also had his share of issues with players and
according to many people he never allowed anyone to become bigger than him in
the club. For him the most infamous incident should be the kicking of boot
which his David Beckham on face and resulted in David’s exit next season.
And finally the most significant similarity which I found
for these two greats of their game is that only very few people during their
era could generate so much polarized view as these two can get.
There are people who think Ganguly is ‘God of offside’, ‘The
man who brought renaissance to Indian cricket’, ‘The first Indian captain who
showed how to win abroad’ and a ‘True fighter’. But there are similar number of
people who think he is ‘Slow, unfit with no proper technique, arrogant and has
absolutely no contribution to Indian cricket’. His shirt waving in the balcony
of Lords brings as much praise as criticism from Indian media. On the other
hand part of Australian media who was always behind his back during his career
finally accepted how they could only consider him as one of their toughest
competitors and how much respect they had for his fighting spirit.
The story is quite similar for Sir Alex. One of the most
successful and longest serving coaches in the history of football. Ferguson is
hailed as an awesome tactician, great motivator and someone who has changed the
face of England football and made Manchester United a super power and well
known brand in the world, whereas his many adversaries would call him arrogant,
hard to work with and even some would accuse him for controlling and
pressurising the referees and FA.
At the end of the day, these two are the biggest names of
their own fields and two of my most respected sporting heroes. No discussion of
Indian cricket or Club football can be completed without at least once
mentioning Sourav’s or Sir Alex’s name.
10th November 2008 was a sad day for me, the day I saw
Saurav Ganguly playing for the last time in Indian jersey, bidding farewell
after a successful 2-0 win over his fiercest rivals, the Australians. The game
is still there and definitely the game is bigger than its players but somewhere
in small corner of my heart the memories of Sourav Ganguly are preserved
carefully & nurtured with affection & respect only for my recollection.
Now I watch the game with more brain and less heart.
Sir Alex will have his last game on 19th of this month and
yes he is also leaving with the success of the 20th league triumph (his 13th
league title and 38th trophy overall for United) and I will be sad once again
but the memories will be there. The memories of his tactical brilliance, of his
passion and the memories of the aura he has built in his 27 years in Manchester
United.
Thanks both of you for the memories and all the best for the
future.
