Time for Dada to drop himself?

It seems rather cruel to blame it all on Dada. The Pune Warriors India, after all, were not a team that were expected to do well in IPL 5. They were robbed of Yuvraj Singh’s services in the lead-up to the tournament, they couldn’t buy top talent during the auction and the clash with BCCI, when they threatened to pull out of the tournament altogether, couldn’t have been easy on the players. But when the Pune Warriors began their season by beating a star-studded Mumbai Indians, who in turn had beaten reigning champions Chennai Super Kings in the first match of IPL 5, there was more than hope near the horizon. Ganguly had made a career of manufacturing captaincy miracles – by backing players against the odds; by taking decision that seemed flawed to begin with; by taking on the opposition in words and deeds. He had done it for such a long time, that you almost expected him to do the same everytime he stepped onto the field. [caption id=“attachment_301439” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Should Ganguly take the bold decision to sack himself as captain?AFP”]  [/caption] However, now the magic seems to have vanished. Pune have lost their last five matches on the trot. From second in the table, the Warriors have fallen to second-last with just 8 points in their kitty after 12 matches. After seven matches, Pune had 4 wins and just 3 losses but now they are in free fall and Ganguly realises that. In the last game against Kolkata Knight Riders, the left-hander came in at five down. Not because he thought he could finish the innings but simply because he was hoping the likes of Robin Uthappa and Steve Smith could get stuck in at some point. Even veteran Delhi bat Mithun Manhas batted ahead of Dada, giving us a glimpse of just how much the 39-year-old has fallen in his own eyes. Ganguly has scored 247 runs at an average of 20.58 but that isn’t the problem. This is T20 – you don’t expect people to average 50 here. The problem is his strike-rate: just 102.48. It basically means two things: he is having trouble forcing the pace and finding the gap. Remember the time when we would curse Rahul Dravid; when every shot that the right-hander seemed to hit in ODIs would go straight to a fielder? Something similar is happening to Dada too. Against spinners, the Dada of old was peerless. He would quickly come down the wicket and dispatch the ball into the stands. It was the epitome of effortless hitting. All timing and little else… But against Sunil Narine, Dada seemed like a green horn – unsure and suspect. Pune Warriors lost the game by just 7 runs and even though it seemed like their skipper played a steady knock of 36 off 35, if only he had hit a couple of fours more, PWI could have won the game. We’ve already seen the likes of Deccan Chargers skipper Kumar Sangakkara and Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Daniel Vettori drop themselves because they felt they weren’t playing well enough. It might be time for Dada to consider the same thing. The way things stand, Pune can’t do much worse.