SRK interfered with team selection at KKR, reveals Sourav Ganguly

Former Indian skipper Sourav Ganguly is an outspoken man. He is someone who is always direct and brutally honest about his answers and opinions. The same nature of the dynamic former cricketer was at display recently. In a jovial rapid fire round of questions in a Bengali talk show named Apur Songsar, Ganguly was seen revealing some of the funny facts about some cricketers and celebrities. As per the reports in Sportzwiki, he even showed his quick-witted nature while answering the tricky questions.

He was asked about how many marks will he give to himself and Shah Rukh Khan on being the team manager. SRK was the team manager of the Kolkata Knight Riders when Sourav Ganguly played the IPL. SRK still holds the position. Ganguly noted that he would only give 6 marks to SRK for the reason that he used to interfere in the selections a little too much. On the other hand, he gave himself a perfect ten! When asked to rate the coaching abilities of Ravi Shastri and Anil Kumble, Ganguly rated Kumble higher than Shastri. He gave 9 marks to Kumble and just 7 to Shastri.

During his playing days, he was renowned to bat with VVS Laxman in the playing order in Tests. However, he did have a problem with him. Revealing the same, Sourav quoted, “He always used to bath before coming on to bat”. Recently, Ravi Shastri had penned down his list of all time great Indian skippers. While he included all the names, he forgot to mention the name of Sourav Ganguly.

When asked about why he thinks Shastri omitted his name, Ganguly remarked that perhaps Shastri was not watching cricket at that time. Ganguly ouster from the limited overs came during the coaching stint of Greg Chappell. Ganguly definitely has harsh feelings for him because on being asked to say a few words on Chappell, he quipped, “Why is he such a fool?” As a captain, Sourav had to take some tough calls.

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The toughest ones were about dropping the players from the team. Reflecting back at how the players reacted on being dropped, Ganguly elaborated, “If Nehra is dropped from the team he used to come in my room at night and will ask me why he was dropped. He will bring his last six matches stats and his stats against Australia. And if Kumble is dropped from the team he stops talking for 2 days.”