Former Indian Captain Sourav Ganguly has signed up for Northamptonshire as a replacement for Australian player Chris Rogers. Ganguly will be playing mostly the Twenty20 Tournament and is expected to bring his wealth of One Day Internationals experience to Northants. Ganguly had signed the contract after knowing that he was not selected for the Indian Test Squad for the Caribbean. The former Indian Captain, who had scored over 10000 runs in ODIs has taken this move of playing county cricket as there wasn’t any first class or any competitive cricket scheduled for quite a few months in India. Sourav is not new to county cricket and he had his first season in English County six years back when he was playing for Lancashire. Last season, he had a short stint with Glamorgan and this season is also going to be a short stint with Chris Rogers expected to return back after fulfilling his commitment with the Australian A side.
Sourav’s performance in county cricket has been moderate and he had struggled to get the tall scores for his sides. He ofcourse had a good time playing in England for his country at both Test and ODIs including his Test Match debut which was at Lord’s where he had notched up a classy century. His first stint in county cricket as mentioned before was for Lancashire in 2000 and Dada scored 671 runs at an average of just below 32 and he just had the six half centuries in the 21 first class innings. Five years after this, he changed colours and turned for Glamorgan and he did much better this time around scoring a ton and 3 fifties in the 9 innings he played at the first class level. Coming to the limited overs matches, Ganguly flopped for Lancashire getting a fifty and failing in the other two matches he had played in 2000. For Lancashire, he was in terrific nick, smashing three 100s and six 50s in 23 games at a healthy average of just under 48. Sourav is also looked upon for delivering some gentle swing bowling that would prove apt for the English conditions. Ganguly is determined to prove to his critics that there is enough quality in him to compete at the International level and this stint for Northants looks to be the last throw of the dice from Sourav to make a comeback in the Indian side. He has to wait for more than a month from now to play his first match which is against Nottinghamshire on the 25th of June.