Sourav Ganguly Gets Candid With Neha Dhupia On Jio Saavn #nofilterneha Season 5, Part One , Says Jyothi Venkatesh

On Sourav Ganguly’s lockdown experience!

It's been too long, isn't it? But, we've opened up. Calcutta has opened up. So, it’s not been a lockdown for me since maybe June. I've started going to the office. I'm at the office at the moment and I've started shooting. I do my shoots, my commercials, I had to finish my show. So, I did that last month and BCCI work is regular because we are hosting the IPL in Dubai so its not been a lockdown that much since the month of June. Yes, we were careful. Travelling has not been at all a part of our lives as it was before. I used to be in Bombay every week. Ya, the BCCI office trying to get cricket going and working and everything, so. It’s been different. More than the lockdown, I think, the situation has been very difficult to handle, mentally. Trying to live with fear, you never experience when you meet someone, the first thing which comes to your mind is he is tested, is he okay, hope he is not going to infect you. So, that's not the right way to lead life but hopefully, this will pass. We've gone through it for 5 and half months now and at some stage, I think somehow we are used to it now, expecting it to pass and then hopefully get back to normal in the next couple of months or 3-4 months, we don't know.

On Sourav Ganguly catching up with his buddies during Quarantine

Not catching up but, maybe SMS. I just had a call from Yuvraj Singh, the day before yesterday. He wants to play cricket, again. But yes, I've been in touch on and off with everyone. In Mumbai, it's a bit different because you have 4 or 5 or 6 of them in the same city. That makes life a lot easier. But, from Kolkata, I think I am the only one. So, it’s either on phone or hello, or a tweet or an Instagram post and then having a laugh on it. Those were great days actually.

On how Sourav Ganguly started playing the game!

No, no. There was no resistance. My father was desperate that I played the game. So, when I just passed out of school, he put me in an academy where I used to practice. Nothing in mind, just go and practice, and hit the ball and get away from home because those days, there were no computers, no mobiles so if you were not doing anything at home, mother wanted you to study. So, to get away from those big piles of books, a cricket bat was a better option so you would go away in the afternoon, practice for three hours, meet your friends for two hours and five hours would be gone. So, it kept you away from home, kept you away from your parents’ discipline. So, that's how it started at a young age. I just kept playing. I used to play Soccer quite a bit. Calcutta being a football crazy city in those days, still is. But, cricket has taken over I think. Life was a lot fun because you were not restricted by television, not restricted by mobiles. So, that's how I started playing the game.

On Sourav Ganguly's late wedding 

I was already playing for India, then, and was very successful after the first two test matches. So the story got, obviously, elongated a lot more than what it was, as it happens in the media. It was just a normal marriage. I knew her since I was young and decided to get married and that's what it was. Got married and went away to the West Indies. I remember entering the lift in Jamaica, we flew about 24 hours those days to get to Jamaica and as we opened the lift, both of us, we saw Ambrose, Walls and Bishops standing in the lift. And, we were literally, literally at the level of their chest. I'd ask my wife you must take this picture, this is going to be a life-time picture and she refused. Because she looked so short in front of Ambrose and Walls & Bishops so she said 'No, no, no, I don't want this picture. It will be embarrassing.' But, yes, it was a normal marriage. It was made a little bit different by the media but, then, that's what it is.

When Sourav Ganguly's own daughter trolled him

I remember that, I said I'm working on a Sunday and she said she woke up, she had just woken up. So, what she was saying is that you work on Sundays and just see, I've woken up at 1'o o'clock in the afternoon. Because she had just finished her board exams. I think a lot of the trolls are with good humor. Lot of people told me that you shouldn't ask your daughter to troll you on Twitter, Instagram. I say what the hell, she can do whatever she wants. Because, I know she's doing it in a good way and I don't mind this banter. At least, she's noticing dad because after 5-6 years she won't even notice dad also.

On things that Sourav Ganguls has learned from his daughter and the younger generation

She's fresh in her thinking. She looks at the world differently than what I do. Our thoughts over the years have been very closed because of the baggage we carry because of what we've gone through, because of the experiences we've had. But, when we look at young girls these days or young boys of the age of 17 and 18, it's just fresh and fearless. They see the world differently. They react to situations differently and sometimes you sit back and see and say 'oh god, that's a good way to react to things. So Why don't you do it?' Everything is fine, there is no problem. She will get up and cook during the lockdown. Yesterday was her mother's birthday so she made custard for her because she didn't want to go to the hotel or the bakery to buy a cake. So, they just think differently. Messages they put in, you see their reactions to things on Twitter, Instagram, it's much different than what you think. That freshness is very, it makes you happy, it makes you feel good. Because, all of us, as we grow and as we get burdened with responsibilities of different ways of doing things and time management and the pressure, your thinking just gets very cordoned off which I don't see with the young boys and girls.

On how Sourav Ganguly always went with his gut-feel

I just went with gut-feel. It’s not right to believe that you have the eye and you'll always go with it. I just went with the gut-feel. I was given a responsibility. What I said to myself the day I got this responsibility is I'll do the best I can. I'm not just going to look at others and see and evaluate myself every time, whether I’m right, wrong, whether I'm doing the right things. I'll just do what I know is best. As long as in my mind I know it’s good for Indian cricket, I'll do it. I worked a lot on mindset also. Mindset in the sense, I'm a very easy person to work with. I've got no baggage. I don't hound people. I don't sit at their backs all the time, telling them that is my way, either you do it or we'll find somebody else. So, I let people be. People express themselves. And, the likes of young Sehwag, Nehra, Nehra was the best of the lot. I even started being a fan of his, when one fine morning, he picked up his bags and baggage, went from Delhi to Goa to lead a happy life, I said, 'Why did you do that?'. He said, 'Delhi had too much pollution'. I said, 'Only Nehra can do this.' So, from that point of view they were all different. I think he needs friends also, he can't stay alone. He wants his friends to be around; he wants people to listen to him.

Of all his opinions and ideas and all the rubbish he will speak, you will have to listen. And you will hear it with the same intensity. And when it was young Yuvraj Singh who we dealt with, then there was Zaheer, so, fantastic person. I enjoyed my time with them. They knew how to respect and the best part of them was they were very adjustable. They went around their job being adjustable not being very pull-headed or stuck to certain things and I enjoyed their company. They also brought freshness because they were younger than me and youth is always something absolutely brilliant to deal with so they were great players in the dressing room, Sachin, Rahul, Anil, Laxman, Sehwag - they were all different.

On the player who listened to no one, always did their own thing

Players who followed your instructions religiously - Yuvraj, Harbhajan, Sehwag, Kaif. Ya, ya, Sehwag is a lovely, very obedient fellow. Yuvi would say 'Aree dada, kya karwa rahe ho. Acha kar lete hai'. He's like that only.

On Players who surprised him by going beyond what he expected

Sehwag, definitely. I think when he started opening for India and the way he played as an opener, I did not expect him to play that well as a Test match opening batsman. Especially for someone who played all his life in the middle order. So, I think he is someone who has taken everybody very pleasantly surprised. And I would say he is one of the great players India has ever produced

On Players Saurav could never say no to

All of them, all of them. Sehwag, Yuvraj, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Sachin, all of them. I couldn't say no.

On Players who picked you when Saurav was feeling low

Sachin, Veeru, Harbhajan, these three. Yuvraj didn't have time. The rest had time to pick me up.

On the best player Saurav has ever captained

Sachin

On the Most difficult player Saurav has captained

Sreenath. Difficult in a good sense, not in a bad sense. Difficult in a good sense because he had his own opinion and that opinion was the last word.

On the Best captain Saurav has ever had

It’s very difficult to say.But obviously when I came in,Sachin was captain, my cricket blossomed under him because he gave me the freedom and gave me the opportunity to play the exposure which is required at that level so he will always be close to my heart. But, then if you see in terms of record, MS had just become captain when I finished, so in terms of record, I think MS will be right at the top. But, if you ask me, under whom my cricket really blossomed till I became captain in the year 2000, it would be Sachin. Because from 96 to 2000, I had him as my captain.

On inside details of the Indian Dressing Room!

It kept changing with every game. It depends on their form, how well they played, if they were scoring runs and taking wickets, you could see a lot more, a lot relaxed, a lot more freedom in the dressing room. If somebody wasn't scoring runs so he was not in the best of the moods, he would be under pressure. If Anil Kumble was picking 5 wickets every game, he is the best guy to go to. If he was getting whacked around the ground, he is not the best guy to go to. So, Ashish Nehra was the other guy. If you would have dropped him a game, anytime he would get you 15 minutes in the dressing room he would take you to a corner and say 'What a big mistake you've made by dropping me.' Nehra is awesome and I miss meeting him, actually. I don't know where he is in Goa. Everyone was different. Zaheer Khan was different, my coach John Wright who was one of my best friends in the team was different. It was great fun. That is what cricket was all about. It got people from Punjab, Bombay, Karnataka, Madras, Bangalore, Kolkata, and you live together, you share the dressing room together, you played for the country together and they were all different. Food habits were different, their music sense was different, their dressing sense was different, their way of celebration was different and that's what made it so good and so special.

On how the players had their own superstitions & beliefs before a match

We all had our superstitions. We wouldn't say it. We would quietly keep it to ourselves hoping that kisi ka nazar na lag jaye. I would put the left pad first. I don't know what Sachin did. I saw once Sachin having the black band in his hand for a long period of time. I asked him what this is for? He quietly said, Anjali ne daal diya and didn't say what it is for. I didn't ask also, maybe he didn't want to say it. Lot of them believed that ki agar koi kuch mannat kiya hai toh bolna zaruri nahi hai. So, you wouldn't go that far to ask. Everybody had their own thing. Some wore the same shoe. I remember going to the world cup in 2003 where we lost in the finals, I played that entire world cup with Harbhajan's shoes. He had old half-and-half spikes.

I played one game with it, I got a 100 and I kept wearing that for the next 6-7 months. Cleaning it up and painting it up and whitening it up. So, we all had our own different ways. We would see Harbhajan wear the same turban at times when he would pick 5 wickets, 6 wickets, 8 wickets. So, all these small small things we keep doing. Because you are under so much pressure, everyone is watching you. When you don't play well, your driver says that you are not fit enough. I remember, against Pakistan, I was not getting runs and I got run out. So I came back home and my driver who worked with me for twenty years, picked up my kick-bag and said are you training enough? Because you are getting run out quite often these days. So you deal with all those things. It's fun but at the same time it's not easy and it teaches you a lot of things to do in your career.