When Indian cricket was surrounded by dark clouds of match-fixing, young Sourav Ganguly emerged as the leader India needed and restored the faith and love of fans towards Indian cricket.
At a time when the bookies were trying everything to get insider news from Indian cricketers, they didn’t have guts to approach former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly. A former bookie revealed in an interview that bookies of that time were “terrified” to approach Sourav Ganguly.
This is what he said:
“During the time Sourav Ganguly was the captain, most bookies wanted him to fix matches. Not just him, even Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble, because they knew if they could have them on their side, they could influence the entire team as per the odds. But, they also knew that it could never happen, because Dada was one of the most patriotic captains. The bookies were scared to approach him as they knew, he would turn them in. So, it was a grown consensus that Ganguly cannot be sold and no one had the guts to approach him, as it could put their business into jeopardy”
In 2010, Sourav Ganguly also revealed that he never had to deal with bookies in his playing career.
“May be the bookies judge players by their characters before approaching them. I always attempted to put an appearance where I would take none of this kind of non-sense. Yes, conversations between players about these things did come up, but it never went beyond that,” Sourav Ganguly said.
