Kolkata: BCCI president Sourav Ganguly on Friday said he is here to make a difference but added that he asks himself sometimes whether he deserves all that he is getting, on the day he was felicitated by the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) here.
“Sometimes I pinch myself that am I really that good to get so much love and affection,” Ganguly said after he was felicitated with a silver salver and bouquet of flowers. Ganguly Wednesday became the 39th BCCI president in Mumbai after serving as CAB president for four years.
Pressed for time nowadays, Ganguly said he never thought he would captain India and then also become BCCI president one day.
“I never thought I will captain India one day. then CAB president and now BCCI president at the age of 46. I don’t get much time now but when I sit with a cup of tea, all these come to my mind. What stands out for me is that I have been able to convince so many people that I am good enough.
“I don’t have a formula. It is what I know best and what my heart says. I will do what is good for Indian cricket. It is a huge responsibility. When I finish, I don’t want anybody to say cricketers are only good players and not good administrators,” said Ganguly.
Thanking everyone at CAB for their support during his time as administrator, Ganguly went down memory lane saying he came at Eden Gardens with his father as a 14-year-old and from then on it was a dream come true.
“For me it’s really special. For me it is an evening to thank all of you for being such a support in my career.
“I have been a difficult person to handle as at times I am my own man and I do what I feel is right. But with time I learned how to do things. Hopefully, we can work together. I’ve got a very young team and very rarely you have seen BCCI president and his team in the age of 30-40s.
“One thing I’m absolutely sure is that whatever time I’m here I will try and make a difference. I’m not going to sit and spend my time for people to say that “I was the BCCI president”. I want to be a “BCCI president who made a difference”, so I’ll try and do that.”
Ganguly had stated before taking over as the 39th President of BCCI that cricket administration in the country was going through an “emergency situation”.
It was a tumultuous 33-month reign of the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) and the onus of resurrecting the Board lies on him now after the image of Indian cricket took a hit following the 2013 IPL spot-fixing scandal.
The situation is not new to Ganguly though. Ganguly was made captain of the national team when Indian cricket was going through its darkest hour in the wake of the 2000 match-fixing scandal.
Ganguly also highlighted that India have not won a world tournament for a long time.
“A cricket nation is known by the number of Tests and world tournaments won. It’s pretty simple as sometime we complicate the game too much. We try to do things which don’t exist.”
