Former Bangladeshi skipper Mashrafe Mortaza, termed Sourav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting, and MS Dhoni as the best captains he has seen in international cricket. However, when it comes to choosing his favourite, Mushrafe went with former Indian leader Ganguly. He reckoned Ganguly as his most liked captain in the world.
Ganguly, as every cricket lover knows, after becoming the captain of the national team, totally changed the Indian cricket. He brought players like Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Mohammad Kaif, Zaheer Khan, Harbhajan Singh, and Dhoni into the team. He mixed the youth power with already established players such as Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath etc. It was Ganguly under whose captaincy India started winning matches on overseas tours.
Ponting and Dhoni, on the other hand, are World Cup-winning captains for their respective countries.
Ponting won two 50-over world cups back to back in 2003 and 2007 and became the only skipper to do so in cricket history, whereas Dhoni led India to lift the 2011 world cup after 28 years. He also won the 2007 T20 World Cup.
“As a captain, I never followed anyone. Sumon (Habibul Bashar) is the best skipper from Bangladesh. If I had to pick from the entire world, I would go for Sourav Ganguly. I heard a lot about Imran Khan, but didn’t get to see him much,” said Mashrafe as quoted by Business Standard.
“From the ones I have seen, I would pick Ricky Ponting, though everyone may say that he was lucky to get a strong team. But I will say that the team needed to be taken care of even with big names. There are a lot of players who had records similar to Ponting. They needed to be managed as well,” he added.
Mashrafe ranked Dhoni after Ganguly and Ponting and claimed these three as his favourites.
“So, after Ponting and Ganguly, I’ll go for MS Dhoni. I have seen Dhoni throughout his career. These are my best three. Among them, Ganguly was very different, and I would be placing him ahead of Dhoni and Ponting,” Mashrafe added further.
Speaking about captaincy then Mashrafe himself was a well-organized skipper. In 2015, under his leadership, Bangladesh made it to the World Cup quarter-finals, defeating England. He last donned the cap of captaincy in the match against Zimbabwe, after which opening batsman Tamim Iqbal was appointed as the new ODI skipper of Bangladesh.
