History of Sourav Ganguly

 

Regarded as one of India’s most successful captains in modern times, Sourav Ganguly will be best remembered for his elegant cricketing style and vast contribution to cricket in India in a career spanning around 15 long years. He was not only India's most successful overseas Test captain, but also ensured he infuse an unknown term in Indian cricket - aggression. The 2003 World Cup final would always be his biggest achievement where most of the critics did not give India much chance.

The “Prince of Kolkata” went on to become one of the greatest ODI batsmen of all time, although his career halted at intervals. He became an effective Test captain, carving a bunch of young and talented players into a winning unit. His stroke play was a combination of grace and precision, and his domination on the off-side masked him as the “God of off side”. While his critics opined that he was unable to face bouncers, others were amazed by his marvelous ability to galvanize the field on the off side with crystal clear precision. Together with Sachin Tendulkar, he formed one of the most damaging opening pairs in ODI cricket history. However, he was always under the hammer for his lack of fitness and athleticism.

“Dada” as he is fondly known, took over as the captain of the Indian team at a time when the game of cricket was disrupted with match-fixing allegations in 2000. Ganguly emerged as a tough, able and an adamant leader, who took his team to miraculous heights, winning Test matches away from home. India continued to be on the winning streak right till the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup finals. Soon after, his career saw a downfall as the loss of his personal form coincided with India’s bland ODI performances and a new leader arrived in the form of Rahul Dravid. A fallout with Greg Chappell, the coach he himself suggested to the BCCI resulted and it looked like that was it. Surprisingly, he made a splendid comeback after being axed from captaincy and continued his prolific scoring in Test cricket. The “Maharaja” finally retired from international cricket in 2008 after playing his last Test against Australia at home.

 

Post retirement, Ganguly continued to play cricket for his state team, Bengal and also signed up with Kolkata in 2008 for the Indian T20 League. He represented the franchise till 2010, but was, shockingly left out of the 2011 auctions as none of the franchises bid for him; until Pune signed him in place of an injured Ashish Nehra. The following year, he led his franchise in absence of regular skipper Yuvraj Singh, and also became the mentor of his team. Dada soon took to commentary as well. He still remains an integral part of Indian cricket, serving as a member of the Cricket Advisory Committee.

 

Ganguly holds a special place in Indian cricket history. For a specific time period in his playing days he was at once the most hated and most loved player in the team. His captaincy tenure has got to be one of the most chronicled ones in recent times. More than his proficiency on the off side, his prolific partnership with Sachin in ODIs, his run in with Greg Chappell etc it is his role as a captain in shaping up a young team for which he is most remembered. He took over at a tumultuous time in the wake of the match fixing saga and, along with the likes of Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble, forged a team that was formidable at home and more than competitive overseas. His relationship with John Wright, India's first foreign coach proved to be the catalyst for India's admirable show in away tours. Ganguly emphasised on the need to be fearless and he led by example in this aspect. His ability to get under the skins of the opposition was built up over time and his brash attitude earned him quite a few call ups into the match referee’s cabin but Ganguly was steadfast and believed that the attitude helped India move forward. His actions were backed with performances on the field too. He finished his career as India's most successful captain and led India to a World Cup final too in 2003.

 

For all his success as captain his batting form took a turn for the worse during his time as captain. Ganguly burst into collective memory in 1996 with back-to-back Test hundreds in England. Subsequently he started to open the innings along with Sachin Tendulkar in ODIs. The duo formed what was arguably the most dangerous opening partnerships in ODI cricket history but his success in the shorter format did not translate in an equal measure in tests. Ganguly was worked over by the bowlers in the longer format and his deficiency against short pitched bowling was something that was picked up by bowlers and captains the world over. This was just the beginning of his problems though.

 

In 2005 Greg Chappell took over as India's coach from John Wright. The relationship between the two strongly opinionated people cracked as time went by. It came out into the open when Chappell's dismissive mail to the BCCI criticising the then captain's ability to lead the side was leaked to the media. A hurt Ganguly threatened to leave the tour midway and had to be pacified by the senior members of the team to continue on with the tour. His poor batting form did not help his cause either and Ganguly had very little public support. He had not scored a ton in more than two years. The long drawn drama ended when Ganguly was finally dropped from the national team and Rahul Dravid was named as his successor. He continued to be on and off in the team for a while but failed to cement his place. He got another chance on the tour to South Africa in 2006 after he was recalled to add some experience to a team that had faced a humiliating exit in the just concluded Champions trophy.

Relieved off the pressure of captaincy and coming back after a while Ganguly was hungry for runs that could restore his reputation. He went about his batting in an uncharacteristically calm manner and ended up as the highest run scorer in the series. He found his mojo in the ODIs too and his prolific run scoring in 2007 earned him a place in the highest run-getters of 2007 just behind Jacques Kallis. His ODI performances were on an upswing too after earning a Man of the series award against Sri Lanka. This was also the year when Ganguly recorded his career best of 239 against Pakistan in a Test in Bangalore. These performances however failed to earn him a spot in the CB series in Australia in 2008 when the selectors opted for a young team with an eye on the future. His form dipped once again as he failed to produce the big scores in a series against Sri Lanka and questions were raised once more regarding his inclusion for Australia's tour. Ganguly answered the questions by choosing to retire immediately after the Australia series. He was given an emotional farewell with the captain MS Dhoni handing him over the reins for a while in the fag end of his last Test in Nagpur in 2008.

 

Ganguly retains his magnetic ability to attract attention much like his playing days when things like him waving his shirt on the Lord's balcony, his coming late for the toss etc grabbed headlines. He has also taken a new avatar as a TV analyst and commentator but he remained an active player in the domestic circuit even three years after his retirement and played both in the Ranji trophy and the IPL with sporadic success until 2012.

The Government of West Bengal honoured Ganguly with the Banga Bibhushan Award on 20 May 2013. He was also awarded the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian awards in India, in 2004.

Division of korea in detail

Detail of the DMZ

The division of Korea between North and South Korea was the result of the Allied victory in World War II in 1945, ending the Empire of Japan's 35-year rule of Korea. The United States and the Soviet Union occupied the country, with the boundary between their zones of control along the 38th parallel.
With the onset of the Cold War, negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union failed to lead to an independent, unified Korea. In 1948, UN-supervised elections were held in the US-occupied south only. This led to the establishment of the Republic of Korea in South Korea, which was promptly followed by the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in North Korea. The United States supported the South, the Soviet Union supported the North, and each government claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula.
The subsequent Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953, ended with a stalemate and has left the two Koreas separated by the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) up to the present day.

Historical background

Korea under Japanese rule (1910–1945)

When the Russo-Japanese War ended in 1905 Korea became a nominal protectorate of, and was annexed in 1910 by, Japan. The Korean king Gojong was removed. In the following decades, nationalist and radical groups emerged, mostly in exile, to struggle for independence. Divergent in their outlooks and approaches, these groups failed to unite in one national movement.^{[1] [2]} The Korean Provisional Government in China failed to obtain widespread recognition.^[3]

End of World War II

In November 1943, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek met at the Cairo Conference to discuss what should happen to Japan's colonies, and agreed that Japan should lose all the territories it had conquered by force. In the declaration after this conference, Korea was mentioned for the first time. The three powers declared that they were, "mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea, ... determined that in due course Korea shall become free and independent."^{[4] [5]}

Regional movement of Soviet forces in 1945

At the Tehran Conference in November 1943 and the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviet Union promised to join its allies in the Pacific War in two to three months after victory in Europe. On August 8, 1945, three months to the day after the end of hostilities in Europe, and two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan.^[6] Soviet troops advanced rapidly, and the US government became anxious that they would occupy the whole of Korea. On August 10, 1945 two young officers – Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel – were assigned to define an American occupation zone. Working on extremely short notice and completely unprepared, they used a National Geographic map to decide on the 38th parallel. They chose it because it divided the country approximately in half but would place the capital Seoul under American control. No experts on Korea were consulted. The two men were unaware that forty years before, Japan and pre-revolutionary Russia had discussed sharing Korea along the same parallel. Rusk later said that had he known, he "almost surely" would have chosen a different line.^{[7] [8]} The division placed sixteen million Koreans in the American zone and nine million in the Soviet zone.^[9] To the surprise of the Americans, the Soviet Union immediately accepted the division. The agreement was incorporated into General Order No. 1 (approved on 17 August 1945) for the surrender of Japan.^[10]
Soviet forces began amphibious landings in Korea by August 14 and rapidly took over the north-east of the country, and on August 16 they landed at Wonsan.^[11] On August 24, the Red Army reached Pyongyang.^[10]
General Abe Nobuyuki, the last Japanese Governor-General of Korea, had established contact with a number of influential Koreans since the beginning of August 1945 to prepare the hand-over of power. Throughout August, Koreans organized people's committee branches for the "Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence" (CPKI, 조선건국준비위원회), headed by Lyuh Woon-hyung, a left-wing politician. On September 6, 1945, a congress of representatives was convened in Seoul and founded the short-lived People's Republic of Korea.^{[12] [13]}

Post-World War II

South Korean citizens protest Allied trusteeship in December 1945.

In December 1945, at the Moscow Conference, the Allies agreed that the Soviet Union, the US, the Republic of China, and Britain would take part in a trusteeship over Korea for up to five years in the lead-up to independence. Many Koreans demanded independence immediately; however, the Korean Communist Party, which was closely aligned with the Soviet Communist party, supported the trusteeship.^{[14] [15]} The US President Franklin Roosevelt had initiated the idea of the trusteeship for Korea in 1943.^[16]
A Soviet-US Joint Commission met in 1946 and 1947 to work towards a unified administration, but failed to make progress due to increasing Cold War antagonism and to Korean opposition to the trusteeship.^[17] Meanwhile, the division between the two zones deepened. The difference in policy between the occupying powers led to a polarization of politics, and a transfer of population between North and South.^[18] In May 1946 it was made illegal to cross the 38th parallel without a permit.^[19]

US occupation of South Korea

Lyuh Woon-hyung giving a speech in the Committee for Preparation of Korean Independence in Seoul on August 16, 1945

With the American government fearing Soviet expansion, and the Japanese authorities in Korea warning of a power vacuum, the embarkation date of the US occupation force was brought forward three times.^[3]
On September 7, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur announced that Lieutenant General John R. Hodge was to administer Korean affairs, and Hodge landed in Incheon with his troops the next day. The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, which had operated from China, sent a delegation with three interpreters to Hodge, but he refused to meet with them.^[20] Likewise, Hodge refused to recognize the newly formed People's Republic of Korea and its People's Committees, and outlawed it on 12 December.^[21]
In September 1946, thousands of laborers and peasants rose up against the military government. This uprising was quickly defeated, and failed to prevent scheduled October elections for the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly.
The ardent anti-communist Syngman Rhee, who had been the first president of the Provisional Government and later worked as a pro-Korean lobbyist in the US, became the most prominent politician in the South. On July 19, 1947, Lyuh Woon-hyung, the last senior politician committed to left-right dialogue, was assassinated by a right-winger.^[22]
The government conducted a number of military campaigns against left-wing insurgents. Over the course of the next few years, between 30,000^[23] and 100,000 people were killed.^[24]

Soviet occupation of North Korea

Welcome celebration for the Red Army in Pyongyang on 14 October 1945

When Soviet troops entered Pyongyang, they found a local branch of the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence operating under the leadership of veteran nationalist Cho Man-sik.^[25] The Soviet Army allowed these "People's Committees" (which were friendly to the Soviet Union) to function. Colonel-General Terentii Shtykov set up the Soviet Civil Administration, taking control of the committees and placing communists in key positions.
In February 1946 a provisional government called the Provisional People's Committee was formed under Kim Il-sung, who had spent the last years of the war training with Soviet troops in Manchuria. Conflicts and power struggles ensued at the top levels of government in Pyongyang as different aspirants maneuvered to gain positions of power in the new government. In March 1946 the provisional government instituted a sweeping land-reform program: land belonging to Japanese and collaborator landowners was divided and redistributed to poor farmers.^[26] Organizing the many poor civilians and agricultural laborers under the people's committees, a nationwide mass campaign broke the control of the old landed classes. Landlords were allowed to keep only the same amount of land as poor civilians who had once rented their land, thereby making for a far more equal distribution of land. The North Korean land reform was achieved in a less violent way than in China or in Vietnam. Official American sources stated: "From all accounts, the former village leaders were eliminated as a political force without resort to bloodshed, but extreme care was taken to preclude their return to power."^[27] The farmers responded positively; many collaborators and former landowners fled to the south, where some of them obtained positions in the new South Korean government. According to the U.S. military government, 400,000 northern Koreans went south as refugees.^[28]
Key industries were nationalized. The economic situation was nearly as difficult in the north as it was in the south, as the Japanese had concentrated agriculture in the south and heavy industry in the north.
Soviet forces departed in 1948.^[29]

UN intervention and the formation of separate governments

South Korean demonstration in support of the U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission in 1946

South Korean general election on May 10, 1948

With the failure of the Joint Commission to make progress, the US brought the problem before the United Nations in September 1947. The Soviet Union opposed UN involvement. At that time, the US had more influence over the UN than the USSR.^[30] The UN passed a resolution on November 14, 1947, declaring that free elections should be held, foreign troops should be withdrawn, and a UN commission for Korea, the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), should be created. The Soviet Union boycotted the voting and did not consider the resolution to be binding, arguing that the UN could not guarantee fair elections. In the absence of Soviet co-operation, it was decided to hold UN-supervised elections in the south only.^{[31] [32]} Some UNTCOK delegates felt that the conditions in the south gave unfair advantage to right-wing candidates, but they were overruled.^[33]
The decision to proceed with separate elections was unpopular among many Koreans, who rightly saw it as a prelude to a permanent division of the country. General strikes in protest against the decision began in February 1948.^[19] In April, Jeju islanders rose up against the looming division of the country. South Korean troops were sent to repress the rebellion. Tens of thousands of islanders were killed and by one estimate, 70% of the villages were burned by the South Korean troops.^[34] The uprising flared up again with the outbreak of the Korean War.^[35]
In April 1948, a conference of organizations from the north and the south met in Pyongyang, but the conference produced no results. The southern politicians Kim Koo and Kim Kyu-sik attended the conference and boycotted the elections in the south, as did other politicians and parties.^{[36] [37]} Kim Koo was assassinated the following year.^[38]
On May 10, 1948 the south held a general election. On August 15, the "Republic of Korea" formally took over power from the U.S. military, with Syngman Rhee as the first president. In the North, the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" was declared on September 9, with Kim Il-sung as prime minister.
On December 12, 1948, the United Nations General Assembly accepted the report of UNTCOK and declared the Republic of Korea to be the "only lawful government in Korea".^[39]
Unrest continued in the South. In October 1948, the Yeosu–Suncheon Rebellion took place, in which some regiments rejected the suppression of the Jeju uprising and rebelled against the government.^[40] In 1949, the Syngman Rhee government established the Bodo League in order to keep an eye on its political opponents. The majority of the Bodo League's members were innocent farmers and civilians who were forced into membership.^[41] The registered members or their families were executed at the beginning of the Korean War. On December 24, 1949, South Korean Army massacred Mungyeong citizens who were suspected communist sympathizers or their family and affixed blame to communists.^[42]

Korean War

This division of Korea, after more than a millennium of being unified, was seen as controversial and temporary by both regimes. From 1948 until the start of the civil war on June 25, 1950, the armed forces of each side engaged in a series of bloody conflicts along the border. In 1950, these conflicts escalated dramatically when North Korean forces invaded South Korea, triggering the Korean War. The North overran much of the South until pushed back by a US-led United Nations intervention. The UN forces then occupied most of the North, until Chinese forces intervened and restored communist control of the North.
The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed after three years of war. The two sides agreed to create a four-kilometer-wide buffer zone between the states, known as the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). This new border, reflecting the territory held by each side at the end of the war, crossed the 38th parallel diagonally.

Geneva Conference and NNSC

As dictated by the terms of the Korean Armistice, a Geneva Conference was held in 1954 on the Korean question. Despite efforts by many of the nations involved, the conference ended without a declaration for a unified Korea.
The Armistice established a Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) which was tasked to monitor the Armistice. Since 1953, members of the Swiss^[43] and Swedish^[44] Armed Forces have been members of the NNSC stationed near the DMZ.

Post-armistice relations

Since the war, Korea has remained divided along the DMZ. North and South have remained in a state of conflict, with the opposing regimes both claiming to be the legitimate government of the whole country. Sporadic negotiations have failed to produce lasting progress towards reunification.^[45