A toast to Ganguly seems to be the order of the day with all news channels carrying quotes from his teammates, past and present, his family, and his friends. I don't go much for accolades for momentous occasions like 100th test, etc.. because they are filled with a lot of sugar and sweetness, some of it false, but this Is definitely a nice time to look back at the various phases of Ganguly, see how it went and how it could have gone if things had been slightly different.

When people talk about Ganguly, invariably the talk is about how he was India's most successful captain, and how he taught the team to stand straight and look the opposition in the eye. However, I think the reason why it was easy for Ganguly to do that was his own position in the team at that time. He was batting brilliantly and with an assured spot in both forms of the game based on his primary skills, he was in a position to give orders and be listened to.

Watching Ganguly shimmy down the wicket and dispatch the faster bowlers over the infield or to see him make room and smash them over the point and cover region was delightful, and that confidence was what made him a good captain; someone who thought he was good enough to try something like that and make it come off.

To be a good captain, one has to have a commanding presence, and Ganguly had it simply because his own accomplishments were then second to none. We can talk about how Ganguly was mentally tough and how he came from a rich background where he was used to be listened to, but more important was the fact that he was beyond reproach in his own discipline. The mental toughness helped in handling pressures that come as a package deal with the captaincy of the national team. Ganguly backed Yuveraj, Bhajji, Sehwag and Zaheer because of his brilliant eye for talent, but a big factor there was that he himself didn't need backing or favours from others to retain his spot. Despite the various form fluctuations over the course of his career, it was probably only in the last stages of his captaincy that he wasn't in the team on the basis of his talents alone.

His captaincy, in my opinion, was a mixed bag. While undoubtedly the most successful captain in terms of statistics, I was surprised many times at the timidness of the man in terms of chasing victories. Many a time, at home or abroad, India might have been in a position to win had they tried slightly harder, only to find that the team management was happy to just sit back and take a draw, or at times (involuntarily) take defeat out of a drawable situation. It wasn't that India would definitely have done it, but there wasn't even an attempt to find out if we could, and this is something I never could understand about Ganguly's captaincy, however successful the pundits might term it. Something akin to Dravid's decision not to enforce the follow on in England; the enemy's throat in our hands and we play safe just in case the enemy transforms into a spitting cobra; a 5% chance but why take it?

During most of Ganguly's captaincy I was a big Ganguly fan and that continued at times when he was in wretched form. When I look at a player's worth, it is the complete package I look at - the batting, the bowling, the fielding, the off-field contributions (if applicable, as obviously it was for a captain). While I never thought of Ganguly as being a strategically good captain on-field, obviously the complete package made him irresistible. Whether it be on the dead pitches of the sub-continent or the tracks in South Africa or Australia, he was capable of smashing them down the ground as a batsman, get a couple of wickets off his innocuous swingers and off the field, pick out blinders like a Yuveraj and a Bhajji. That made up for the lousy fielding and the terrible running between the wickets; surely the other ten could do some work too!!!

He also took some harsh decisions which I felt were good for Indian cricket. Dravid's conversion into a wicketkeeper-batsman in the ODI format is still reviled by many but in my opinion was one of the very few excellent on-field moves, another being the gradual removal of Anil Kumble from the ODI team eleven. Both decisions were extremely difficult to make momre so because of the stature of the people involved. In case of Dravid, while a lot of credit goes to Dravid himself for the way he made the idea succeed, what makes it brilliant was the stubborness with which Ganguly went ahead with the plan despite oppisition from many fronts. A captain has to sometimes take decisions irrespective of their popularity and Ganguly being thick-skinned enough was one of his success mantras.

His captaincy record is well chronicled and I don't want to get into it, but I wish he had finished his captaincy the same way as he had led in his prime; with style! Earlier I spoke about the confidence of being good at his job as a batsman being a prime factor for his success as captain, and I feel Ganguly failed at recognizing what got him success in the first place. Maybe he was still as thick skinned, as stubborn, as determined, but his batting skills had left him and his smugness at scoring a hundred against Zimbabwe should have sounded him the loudest warning bells. Imagine Pete Sampras beating Ramesh Krishnan and proclaiming the victory to be an answer to his critics!

While Ganguly's comeback has been remarkable, what is glossed over more often than not is the fact that if he had batted the way he bats today (albeit far from his best), he would not be the excess baggage Chappell tried to offload from the team. Forget even whether Chappell was right or Ganguly was - what convinces me of the human fraility of judging itself is the fact that till date Ganguly talks about the circumstances in which he went out not being fair on him; I have yet to hear him add that the circumstances in which he came back were equally strange, with nothing in terms of a domestic performance and plenty in terms of meeting board presidents, upset parliamentarians and frenzied Calcuttans backing him. To recognize the former and be oblivious of the latter is the kind of thought that convinces me that those who say "great players know when to go" have no clue of the time of day. Given a choice, Kapil Dev would still be trundling in at 85 miles per hour and at the age of 40, a certain Mr. SRT would be looking ahead to World Cup 2015, and he definitely wouldn't consider any other position than opener.

As Ganguly tomorrow plays his 100th test in Melbourne, he might feel a twinge as he remembers his last visit to Australia as the captain of the team. It might be a twinge of regret at not being captain anymore, or it might be a twinge of relief that things look to be ending on a much more positive note than was thought possible an year back. Whichever twinge it might be, it is sure that his autobiography, whenever it comes out, would be a best-seller. If however, he closes out his career with as much on-field majesty as when he ruled in his prime, he will get far more than an auto-biography will ever get him in terms of respect of his fellow players and genuine cricket fans.