Sourav Ganguly was known to create a buzz on the field either with his bat or his leadership skills during his playing days. He continues to do so well after leaving the field. Around 30 years after starting his international cricketing journey in 1992, he can cause wild speculations with a seemingly innocuous tweet. “Planning to start something that I feel will probably help a lot of people.” His tweet last week was enough to fan rumours of his resignation as the BCCI president.
It needed the BCCI secretary Jay Shah’s word to put them to rest. “The rumours doing rounds about Mr Sourav Ganguly stepping down from the post of BCCI president are factually incorrect,” Shah was quoted as saying.
“We have some exciting times in the form of media rights coming up and my colleagues and I are completely focused on the upcoming opportunity and safeguarding the interest of Indian cricket,” he added. Shah and Ganguly spent time together during the IPL knockouts in Kolkata and the final in Ahmedabad. The former India skipper in fact is said to be in the running to become the next International Cricket Council (ICC) president with a number of officials of the game’s global body visiting the Eden Gardens during the IPL.
Ganguly was elected the BCCI chief in October 2019 and he still has four more months left in his three-year tenure. That Ganguly, in the tweet, thanked everyone who has been part of his cricketing journey, spiced up the rumours. “The year 2022 marks the 30th year since the start of my journey with cricket in 1992. Since then, cricket has given me a lot. Most importantly, it has given me the support of all of you. I want to thank every single person, who has been part of the journey, supported me, and helped me reach where I am today,” he wrote in a brief statement.
Speculations of Ganguly joining politics were doing the rounds since the last West Bengal Assembly election in 2021. It gathered steam when Union Home Minister Amit Shah had dinner at his residence on May 6 during the latter’s visit to the state. Although Ganguly, who had always been a favourite of political leaders cutting across political lines and is also very close to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, himself ruled out any possibilities of joining politics.
