Sourav Chandidas Ganguly made his ODI debut against Australia in 1992 but was dropped immediately after. He had to wait for another 4 years before making a sensational Test debut against England in 1996. Following this, he went on to become one of the most dependable players for the team and eventually, took over the captaincy from Sachin Tendulkar in 2000. Sourav Ganguly holds the record for most Test wins by an Indian captain but a major slump in from and a much publicized spat with coach Greg Chappell led to his sacking and may be has put an end to his international career.

Ganguly is a natural left-hander but converted himself into a left-handed batsman at a young age. He also bowls decent medium pacers. He has many nicknames, `Bengal Tiger`, `Prince of Calcutta` and `Dada` to name some. For opponents, he is `Lord Snooty` due to his aggressive behaviour. He has the rare distinction of having made a Test century at Lords, Harry Graham and John Hampshire being the only others.

Ganguly is a better one-day player than a Test batsman. In fact he has a highest score of 183 in ODIs scored against Sri Lanka at Taunton in the 1999 World Cup as opposed to his 173 in Test cricket also against the same opponent. With his bowling, Sourav has taken 26 wickets in Test and 93 in ODIs. Ganguly was awarded the Padma Shri in 2004. As a batsman, Ganguly has scored 10,000 plus runs in One Day Cricket and over 5,000 runs in Test cricket - this includes 12 centuries in Tests and 22 in ODIs. As an opening combination, Ganguly and Tendulkar were highly successful in one-dayers scoring 5,308 runs at an average of 45.37.

In 2000, Ganguly took over the captaincy not long after the match-fixing saga had rocked both Indian cricket and world cricket as a whole. Ganguly transformed a team of potential match-winners into match-winners during his stint as skipper. Under his captaincy, India beat Australia in the Test series 2-1 at home in 2001, drew 1-1 with England in England in 2002 and went on to win the Natwest one-day trophy defeating the same team in the season. The same year, there were also the joint ICC trophy winners. Better things followed when India made an extraordinary recovery to make it to the finals of the 2003 World Cup where they eventually went down to Australia. But India had some sought of revenge when they managed to hold Australia to a 1-1 draw in the Test series Down Under. This was Steve Waugh`s farewell series. He went out with a blaze scoring 80 in his final innings but India retained the Border-Gavaskar Trophy on virtue of winning the previous series against the two sides.

Critics did try to down play India`s performance by pointing out that the performance came in the absence of Glenn McGrath and Brett Lee and Shane Warne. But Ganguly silenced all the critics by defeating a full strength Pakistan side in Pakistan in both the Test and the one-day series. This was the highpoint of Ganguly`s captaincy but also turned out to be the end of glorious phase in Indian cricket. When Australia toured India in 200, Ganguly pulled himself out of the match at the last minute in the Nagpur Test. Many felt he was scared to play on a green top. As it turned out, India lost the Test comfortably and went on to lose the series too. Things were never the same in Indian cricket after that defeat. Ganguly and John Wright formed a good captain-coach combo but the side had degenerated towards the end of their reign. Rahul Dravid and current coach Greg Chappell are now trying to put things back on track.

Ganguly had ample of lean spells throughout his international career, most due to his poor footwork and inability to play the rising ball. That apart he has always been embroiled in controversy due to his highly aggressive nature both on and off the field. In fact, he has had to sit out a number of matches due to the bans imposed on him by match referees for indecent behaviour, slow over rates and many other reasons.

Ganguly did score a century when India last toured Zimbabwe but his spat with Chappell made all the headlines. The word going around was that Chappell did not want him in the side and soon Ganguly fell out of contention with the selectors. His dropping led to massive protests in his hometown Kolkata with effigies of chief selector Kiran More and Indian coach Chappell being burnt. But it was not good enough to make the selectors change their mind. Ganguly is presently representing Northamptonshire in English County cricket.

He is the joint holder of the second highest score by an Indian cricketer in an ODI - 183 along with Mahendra Dhoni. He also holds the record for the highest first wicket partnership for India in an ODI match with Sachin Tendulkar - 258 against Kenya in 2001.