Get a lot of happiness in seeing MS Dhoni’s career, says Sourav Ganguly

MS Dhoni took over Test captaincy when Anil Kumble retired during the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Incidentally, the final Test of the series was Sourav Ganguly’s last Test match before hanging up his boots. Ganguly revealed that he feels a sense of pride at seeing what Dhoni has achieved in his career. Ganguly's reason for his pride in Dhoni's career spans from the fact that both players hail from a part of India with very little cricketing history - the East. In spite of this, they went on to lead the team as two of the most successful captains in India.

“Get a lot of happiness in seeing MS’ career. The reason for that is that when we started playing cricket, there were not a lot of cricketers that came from the east. No one believed that India would see a lot of cricketers from that side. Now the two of us have played so many matches, and captained so many matches. I played close to 450 international matches. The other day, MS completed 500 matches in Cardiff. It feels great that a part of India that did not create a lot of cricketers has given the country two captains - Sourav Ganguly and MS Dhoni,” said Ganguly in an interview on Breakfast with Champions.

Dhoni made his ODI debut in 2004 under Ganguly's captaincy and after a few poor performances, Dhoni was promoted to bat at No.3 by Ganguly and he proved his worth with a thunderous 148 against Pakistan. A few months later he became a household name as he blasted his way to 183 against Sri Lanka. Ganguly stated that he knew about Dhoni’s potential and sent him up the order to utilize his full potential.

“When Dhoni came into the team in 2004, he played his first two games at the No.7 spot. We were about to play Pakistan in Vizag, after the team was announced, I was sitting in my room and started thinking about how we could utilize his full potential. After the warm-ups and the toss, on my way back, I thought might as well send him up the order. I told him that he had to play at the No.3 spot. He asked me where I would bat, so I told him that I would bat at No.4 and we would see what would happen. He scored a century. 

“No. You can’t see such things so early,” Ganguly replied when asked about whether he sensed Dhoni would be a good captain as well.