Kolkata: It seems many moons ago when the Eden Gardens last hosted a ICC World Cup final in 1987. A teenaged Sourav Ganguly was then a rookie cricketer yet to make his first class debut while Abhishek Dalmiya, son of cricket’s late strongman Jagmohan Dalmiya, was yet to be born.
Over to the upcoming World Twenty20 final on Sunday here and the duo seems to be firmly in saddle to restore the historic venue it’s rightful pace in the hierarchy of top venues. Ganguly, the former Indian skipper famous as ‘Dada’ in the cricketing fraternity, has scored major brownie points with a seamless organisation of the high profile India-Pakistan clash as the President of Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) with junior Dalmiya playing a perfect second fiddle as the joint secretary of the state body.
The phrase dynastic rule usually may have a negative ring about it in political context — but not so in the case of cricket administration in the City of Joy. While Dalmiya senior’s reputation precedes him as one of the game changers in cricket’s history, not many are aware of the role Chandi Ganguly, father of Ganguly, played in staging the Reliance Cup final nearly 30 years back — and at a time when India were nowhere near being a cricketing superpower as now.
The camaraderie between Jagmohan Dalmiya and Ganguly senior, which grew from their club cricket days at the Maidan, found a resonance when they took over the reins of the CAB in the early Eighties. While the former went on to scale peaks in the echelons of cricketing officialdom to finally become the president of International Cricket Council (ICC), Ganguly senior preferred in holding fort in the state administration despite enjoying a tremendous clout with the top brass of Board of Control for Cricket In India (BCCI).
“Hosting the World Cup final is definitely a bigger challenge. Mind you, we may have hosted several major matches in between, but the final of a global event is coming back to us after 29 years,” Ganguly said. The local media, which had been eating out of Ganguly’s hands all along during his playing career, waxed eloquent about his hands-on style of administration in the two World T20 matches so far — the only blip coming with a power failure during the New Zealand-Bangladesh group match last Saturday.
Echoing Ganguly’s sentiments that the CAB has to put it’s best forward over the next couple of days, Abhishek Dalmiya told Gulf News: “To my knowledge, no cricketing venue in the world has hosted World Cup finals of two different formats. It’s our best chance to restore the Eden it’s rightful place among the prestigious and historic venues in the world.”
If it was Dalmiya senior, who during his final tenure as the president of the BCCI managed to win the World T20 final for Kolkata, the next generation staged a coup of sorts when they swung the marquee India-Pakistan league game here on March 19 after the original choice Dharamshala was deemed ‘unsafe.’ Asked how they managed to do it, Dalmiya junior said: “We had actually given a presentation to BCCI earlier that in the last few cycles of the ICC events in India since the 2006 Champions Trophy, we haven’t been assigned a match involving India and are keen to host one. The board officials showed a fine gesture by giving us the match.”
At a personal level, how difficult has it been for the young Abhishek to carry on the legacy of his father — a larger-than-life figure in global cricket administration? “See, my advantage is I have been assisting my father for quite a few years now. I have had a close look at the nitty gritties of organisation of big matches like the 199th Test match of Sachin Tendulkar, two finals of Indian Premier League (IPL) and number of other international fixtures.
“While I enjoy a personal relationship with Ganguly, it’s a matter of teamwork which keeps us going. We have inherited an experienced team which worked with my father as recently as last September and everybody knows their role. It’s certainly made our life easier,” Dalmiya junior added.
