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 Poor team form, overbearing officials, low morale. It is perhaps the worst of times to take over as captain. But Saurav Ganguly isn't scared.

By Rohit Brijnath in Bangalore

The boy, think of him, just for a while, a moment, nothing more. Think of his stomach and the nervousness coiled there like a serpent. He calls the newspaper offices. Once. Then again on his way to tuition. Then again from his tutor's house.
Finally, they say yes, the Indian team list is out. The names are spoken, one by one. He waits for his to be mentioned. It never is. Not in 1993 or 1994 or 1995.

During the 1996 World Cup, Moloy Banerjee, former Bengal Ranji player, the boy's friend and adviser, meets Abbas Ali Baig. Baig was manager in 1992 in Australia when everyone decided the boy's cricketing future had hit a finish line. "Any chance of him making it?" Banerjee asks. Baig thinks, then says, "No, I think he's missed the bus."

Screw the bus. Banerjee grins. "Looks like he took the plane."
He is Saurav Ganguly, boyish but no boy, and he's sitting by the pool at Bangalore's Taj West End, two days before the second Test against South Africa. And he's grinning too. Big grin, huge one, a this-is-a-good-life kind of grin. Happens when a trembling caller to newspapers is now called by them to tell him he's captain of India. "I never thought I'd play for India again. Once, I was ready to quit. How could I even dream of being captain?" he says.

Fame this fellow already knows. When he wants to see a film in Calcutta he calls the manager of the hall, asks for a corner seat in the last row, creeps in five minutes after the film begins and creeps out five minutes before it ends.
That was fun. Now he's got the job that comes attached with a medical prescription for antacids. So far, he's not led a day. But he's not handicapped by fear. "I can never have more pressure than the day I played in England in 1996. It was my first Test and, if I didn't score runs, possibly my last." He scored a century that day, and again in the second Test, indicating that the serpent in his stomach was dead and gone.

Ganguly doesn't look like an athlete, never has, but it camouflages, so we're told, a certain ferocity. College pal Debang Gandhi points to his "analytical mind"; Banerjee says he's instinctively attacking and Ganguly himself, tells you, flat out, "I don't believe in draws." But in a nation where Tendulkar was supposed to be Mike Brearley, myths unravel as fast as they are constructed. Ganguly must know that the first time he is vaguely defensive he'll get a mouthful of critical newsprint.

Time is the factor. As Kapil Dev says, "You can't give the cap to one person, then to another, then another." If we picked Ganguly to lead this stuttering side, then he's deserving of his opportunity. We know that he studies the game well. And himself as well. Ask and he admits, the grin back, "I love watching myself hit a cover drive, I love watching myself hit a hundred." Better still, it is said he studies his teammates carefully too, quick to see overconfidence, fast to pinpoint strengths. This better be true for if he says some of his team were intimidated in Australia then he and the new team psychologist B. Ganesh Kumar (who is already having individual sessions with the players) have to alter established mindsets; if he explains it's not a question of lacking openers but that openers lack confidence then he must help regain their composure.

Ganguly speaks with a cultivated smoothness, his words as seductive as his strokeplay. As he faces awkward politicking in his team and jousts with petty administrators, his erudition should serve him well. Already he is gently disarming about the BCCI, saying, "I will tell them what I want and I am sure the board will listen." He articulates a long forgotten truth later when he says, "If Indian cricket has to get ahead we must communicate better."

Ganguly is a modern man, more comfortable with the present than with the past. In one deep breath he can rattle off the number of Man of the Match awards Tendulkar has won, the Test runs Saeed Anwar has collected and what Rahul Dravid's batting average is. Yet, the same man once amiably told an interviewer who questioned him on Bodyline, "Didn't Ray Lindwall take part?" (Lindwall was an Australian to begin with, and who played in a later era). He will say without a trace of embarrassment, "I don't read, I don't have the patience", which is no capital crime except that if he did he'd know the sins of Indian cricket are inextricably linked to its past.

Unlike Australia (match fit, combative, confident), South Africa (physically strong, team-oriented) or Pakistan (talented aggression), Indian cricket has constantly lacked a distinct personality. Are we wristy artists, will we ever evolve into athletes, can we, like Dave Whatmore did and is doing again with Sri Lanka, take talent and discipline it? We have been bereft of answers, and as Sanjay Manjrekar wonders, "Can Ganguly find us our strengths?" It asks questions of his imagination.

One thing though from the past that haunts him like a ghost is the way at 17 he was dismissed as incompetent. He knows every successful domestic cricketer may not possess a Test match gene, that two Ranji centuries don't mean a player is ready for Allan Donald. Yet he is sensitive enough to add a corollary: "If you're going to pick someone, give him enough chances, play him in four-five Tests if not more, not just one." Don't dismantle a player's confidence he is saying, nor cheapen the Indian cap.

He must handle with care too his euphoric home state. For decades Bengal felt that its cricketers -- Ambar Roy, Subroto Guha, Gopal Bose, Sambaran Banerjee -- were persecuted by biased administrators. Ganguly offers them an opportunity to redress the balance and calls for Utpal Chatterjee's return are imminent. "I still feel he's very good but whoever is better will play," says Ganguly, "whether he's from Bengal or Tamil Nadu or Karnataka. This is according to what I see or feel. I could be wrong but I have to trust my opinion."

And so, a young man, a batsman with glistening skills, a man of tested nerve and clever mind, embraces tightly an honour he's been given. It is clearly the worst of times to be Indian captain. An overbearing board, a team in disarray and a system rusted over means every sinew of Ganguly's will be stretched and tested. Think of a tightrope walker, walking across the Grand Canyon on one leg with a 50 lb pack on his shoulders and a stiff wind in his face. That's what Ganguly's next journey will seem like.
Says the man who's journeyed further than we thought: "I'm not scared." You think, of course, he should be.

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