Cry, cry me a river, for I have cried a river for you, Bengal. Wide and deep as the Ganga that flows down to the Bay of Bengal.
I just added "Bengal" to that timeless classic sung by Joe Cocker and Julie London because that is how most Bengalis must be feeling today. Sad and blue in the middle of the Durga Puja, the biggest Bengali festival, for we have just endured a double heartbreak.
The world's cheapest car will now be built in Gujarat because the blight of Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, drove the epochmaking project — on which $350 million had already been spent — out of the state with her senseless agitation.
And Sourav Ganguly is bidding goodbye to cricket.The upcoming four-Test series against Australia in India will be his last hurrah.
Yes, he is an old warrior, at 36, who has seen his finest days. He has been batting on a sticky wicket of late, if called to play at all, his form questioned by critics and not always vindicated by his own performances on the field.
But what a heroic career he had, exploding with a century on his Test debut at Lords — only the third player to do so in the entire history of cricket — and going on to be India's most successful Test captain. India won 21 of the 49 Tests played under his captaincy. We will remember Ganguly not just as a great batsman but for his undaunted spirit. As the Telegraph newspaper in Calcutta says today:
For much of his career, Sourav Ganguly has been hated by the Australians, chiefly because of his “don’t-mess-with-me” attitude, which they believe is solely their preserve.
But you did us proud, Ganguly. You reflected the new assertive India now being hailed as an emerging giant.
As for the carping critics who have accused you of "inconsistency" and "impetuousness", well, every great man has his detractors.
Robert Browning articulated brilliantly what you have gone through. Here is his poem, The Patriot, which, as one Bengali to another, I think was written only for someone like you:
The Patriot
By Robert Browning
An Old Story
I
It was roses, roses, all the way,
With myrtle mixed in my path like mad.
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had,
A year ago on this very day!
II
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowds and cries.
Had I said, “Good folks, mere noise repels—
But give me your sun from yonder skies!”
They had answered, “And afterward, what else?”
III
Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun,
To give it my loving friends to keep.
Nought man could do have I left undone,
And you see my harvest, what I reap
This very day, now a year is run.
IV
There’s nobody on the house-tops now—
Just a palsied few at the windows set—
For the best of the sight is, all allow,
At the Shambles’ Gate—or, better yet,
By the very scaffold’s foot, I trow.
V
I go in the rain, and, more than needs,
A rope cuts both my wrists behind,
And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds,
For they fling, whoever has a mind,
Stones at me for my year’s misdeeds.
VI
Thus I entered Brescia, and thus I go!
In such triumphs, people have dropped down dead.
“Thou, paid by the World,—what dost thou owe
Me?” God might have questioned; but now instead
’Tis God shall requite! I am safer so.
The Telegraph in London duly notes Ganguly's greatness:
Whatever happens over the next four weeks, Ganguly has been a massive figure in the history of Indian cricket. No one else has approached his figure of 21 Test victories as captain, nor contributed to so many series wins overseas.
Ganguly has often been ridiculed for his privileged upbringing in Calcutta, which led to one reporter dubbing him 'Lord Snooty’, but this was to miss the point. It was his very sense of entitlement which allowed him to overcome India’s traditional reticence, especially away from home. Before he took over, they had always been parodied as “tigers at home, pussycats abroad”. Yet Ganguly helped India become a genuinely powerful Test side in all conditions.
AFP reminds us:
The elegant left-hander has so far scored 6,888 runs in 109 Tests at an average of 41.74 with 15 centuries.
Ganguly finished his one-day career with 11,363 runs in 311
matches, one of only seven batsmen in the world to cross the 10,000-run
mark in limited-overs cricket.
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