One Lord’s story with ‘Dada’ every time

In 2002, young Andrew Flintoff came on to bowl the final over in the Natwest final where a skinny Mohammed Kaif had played a swashbuckling knock of 87 runs in 75 balls. But unfortunately for him, it was number 10 batsmen Zaheer Khan, who was on strike when India needed two runs in the last over.

Kaif had built on a strong partnership with old colleague Yuvraj Singh after the middle-order couldn’t capitalise on a start given by Saurav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag. But Yuvi had departed in the 42nd over leaving Kaif to chase 59 runs in 50 balls with the tail enders.

This might sound like an easy run-chase now because of T20 cricket taking over and shaping batsmen into hard-hitters of the ball. But in that era of cricket, a total of over 300 runs meant that a chase was almost impossible.

But Zaheer somehow managed to get his bat on the ball to get Kaif on strike. But it became more dramatic when there was an overthrow. Kaif had already dived to complete a run but as soon as he saw the overthrow he knew that he has done the job and ran back to complete the second run provoking Ganguly to do his infamous shirt-twirl at Lord’s.

There have been several anecdotes from Ganguly himself about the incident but there was a bunch of teenagers who were doing the same at home while watching Ganguly on their television sets. The Indian team vice-captain and Mumbai Indians captain, Rohit Sharma led this bunch. Rohit recollected this memory while sitting beside ‘Dada,’ during the launch of his his book, “A Century is Not Enough.”

“I was 13 or 14. We were watching it at our friend’s house in the night. As soon as he (Ganguly) removed his t-shirt, all of us got excited and removed our t-shirts as well. We kept twirling them until he stopped,” quipped Rohit.

“It was amazing for all of us aspiring cricketers to see a run-chase like that. We did chest bumps and high fives of celebration after it,” he added.

Sitting right next to both of them that evening was the legendary Sachin Tendulkar. “I told him “Dada kya kar raha hai,” he recalled. “I think VVS (Laxman) was pulling my t-shirt at the same time as I was removing it,” said Ganguly.

While Ganguly expresses his admiration for Rohit’s batting skill, the latter has similar feelings for the former. “From my understanding, the Indian cricket team was going through a tough phase post-2000. When Dada came and took the responsibility, he redefined leadership. I have obviously learnt from him. Now that I am taking leadership, I do these things for MI and the national team sometimes,” said Rohit.