In the history of white-ball cricket, there has never been a greater opening pair than Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly.
In 136 innings, the two have clubbed 6,609 runs at an average of 49.32, which is the most successful for India.
The Tendulkar-Ganguly partnership stormed the limelight in the late 90s and early 2000s. Then, to accommodate Virender Sehwag, the three shared the opening slot. Later, the pair of Ganguly-Sehwag and Sachin-Sehwag had their separate achievements, flair and success.
In white-ball cricket, India has been perennially blessed with a successful opening partnership since then in the form of Sehwag-Gautam Gambhir and now Rohit Sharma-Shikhar Dhawan.
Recently, during his latest interaction with Indian Test opener Mayank Agarwal, Sourav talked about Sachin’s reasons, rather excuses, for not taking the strike.
“Sachin Paji always forced you to take the strike while opening with you in ODIs? Myth ? Reality ? Listen to what Dada has to say #DadaOpensWithMayank episode coming up soon on http://bcci.tv,” BCCI captioned its post with an excerpt of the interaction.
“Always, he did. He had an answer to that. I used to tell him ‘sometimes you also face the first ball. I always face the first ball’. He had two answers for that,” Ganguly said.
“One, he believed if his form was good, he should continue and remain at the non-striker’s end. And when his form wasn’t good, he would say ‘I should remain at the non-striker’s end, as it takes the pressure off me’. He had an answer for both good form and bad form,” he added.
“Until and unless some days, you walk past him and stood at the non-striker’s end, and he was already on TV, and he would be forced to be at the striker’s end. That has happened once or twice, I went past him and stood at the non-striker’s end,” Ganguly concluded.
Here’s the video:
Sachin Paji always forced you to take the strike while opening with you in ODIs? Myth ? Reality ?
Listen to what Dada has to say 😄#DadaOpensWithMayank episode coming up soon on https://t.co/uKFHYe2Bag @mayankcricket @SGanguly99 pic.twitter.com/YM0yEatMcE
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 6, 2020
