The curious case of Saurav Ganguly

So finally, no one bid for Saurav Ganguly. A great career coming to an unfairly ignominious end. Why did the franchisees choose not to bid for a player of Ganguly's caliber? The following could be the reasons:

Performance - In the 26 matches that he has played in IPL, Ganguly has a strike rate of 104.67. Compared to this, batsmen like Dravid, Wasim Jaffer and Laxman, who have a reputation of being slow scorers, have strike rates of 120.68, 107.44 and 105.45 respectively. Whichever angle you see it, Ganguly's batting performance was a big let down in the last 3 IPLs. This simple fact was perhaps drowned by his reputation.

Captaincy - Ganguly was one of the best captains India has ever had. There is no question about it. He had a keen eye for talent and had the guts to back it all the way. That is why the team he built had some talented young players like Sehwag, Yuvraj and Zaheer, all of whom he backed to the hilt. But given a team, which did not necessarily have the advantage of being more talented than the other teams, the important question was - Can he bring the team together and inspire them to punch above their weight, a la Shane Warne? Sadly, the answer was a big no. In the first and the third edition of the tournament, where he captained KKR, in spite of having a decent team he was not able to take KKR to the semi-finals.

Reputation - Saurav Ganguly has always had a reputation of someone who is a difficult person to handle. Right from the time when as a 19 year old he refused to carry drinks (something which he denies doing) to his altercation with Greg Chappell, he has been controversy's child. In a tournament like IPL, where players from across the world come together for a very short duration of time, the ability to get along with the players and coaches count for a lot.

Base price - The combination of the aforementioned three points makes it very difficult for any of the franchisees to bid for him. Add to it the base price of $400,000, it becomes impossible. Perhaps, Ganguly would have found few takers at $200,000, which was his initial base price.

It will be interesting to see how the Kolkata crowd reacts to Ganguly's omission from the IPL. Having seen the fanatic support Ganguly commands in whole of Bengal, I would be surprised if KKR gets any support from the crowd. But that is still some time away. The IPL auction has shown one thing for sure - stature counts for little in this big bad world of cricketainment.