Sourav Ganguly Could Have Been the First Cricketer in 146 Years to be Timed Out
Key Highlights :
The recent Timed Out appeal against Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews in Monday’s game at the Kotla in New Delhi took me back to January 5, 2007. It was on this day that Sourav Ganguly could have become the first cricketer in 146 years of international cricket to be Timed Out had the then South Africa captain appealed for a verdict against him. The game was being played at Newlands, Cape Town, and India were in pursuit of a Test series win in South Africa for the first time.
The Indian cricket team, led by Rahul Dravid, had beaten South Africa in the opening Test of the three-match series in Johannesburg—the Test in which Ganguly made his comeback in the Greg Chappell era and the game in which S Sreesanth underlined how massively talented and skilled he was as a bowler. India had a great chance of recording a series win in the Rainbow Nation, but South Africa outclassed them in the next Test at Durban.
On the morning of Day Four of the final Test at Cape Town, India were reduced to six for the loss of openers Virender Sehwag and Wasim Jaffer with Dravid at the crease. Sachin Tendulkar was next man in, but he was off the field for 18 minutes the previous day. According to the 2007 edition of the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, there were five minutes left for him to be eligible to be on the field again and he “was halted on his way to the crease at the fall of the second wicket.”
We journalists were left wondering what could be the reason for the delay of the incoming batsman. We soon discovered that Tendulkar couldn’t walk out and figured that another batsman was getting ready to enter the playing arena. After a seven-minute delay, we saw Ganguly arriving, much to our relief.
Wisden mentioned that Ganguly was not even in whites when the dressing room learnt that Tendulkar couldn’t bat at that point in time. VVS Laxman would have to go but he was in the washroom – “caught with his pants down literally – in the toilet.”
The umpire in the thick of things was Australian Daryl Harper, who spoke to the media after play ended for the day. Harper gave the impression that the Indian camp should have been aware of when Tendulkar could walk out to bat. On the other hand, he admitted that he and his partner Asad Rauf could have apprised them of the situation before play could start.
We journalists were left wondering what could be the reason for the delay of the incoming batsman. We soon discovered that Tendulkar couldn’t walk out and figured that another batsman was getting ready to enter the playing arena. After a seven-minute delay, we saw Ganguly arriving, much to our relief.
South Africa skipper Graeme Smith had the opportunity to appeal for a Timed Out verdict against Ganguly, but he chose not to. Smith said in a pre-series interview to Cricinfo Magazine when asked if he would indulge in some gamesmanship with Dravid: “I don’t think any of that sort of stuff would make the slightest difference to him [Dravid]. You can’t put any extra pressure on the captain of the Indian cricket team—he’s got quite enough already with the weight of expectation from the nation and the nation’s media. Besides, it wouldn’t even occur to me to play games like that with Rahul. It will be a straightforward contest of cricketing skills between two passionate teams, and if Rahul and I can produce a good piece of captaincy here and there, so much the better.”
Smith chose not to be part of history when he could have easily played a role in Ganguly being Timed Out. How some of us would hope Shakib would do a Smith and be empathetic towards Mathews’s helmet malfunction at the Kotla. Had Smith appealed for a Timed Out verdict against Ganguly, he would have been the first cricketer in 146 years of international cricket to be Timed Out.
