QUICK FACTS NAME: Sourav Ganguly OCCUPATION: Cricketer BIRTH DATE: July 8th 1973 PLACE OF BIRTH: Kolkata Sourav Ganguly the former Captain of the Indian Cricket team is an aggressive left-handed  batsman in the middle order and also bowls right-handed military medium pace.  Ganguly was born in an affluent family in Kolkata on 8th July 1973. As a young boy, Sourav's first interest was football and he played in the school football team for four years. But later he shifted to cricket and joined a cricket coaching club. Young Sourav made a century in an under-15 cricket match and another century in the 1991 Duleep Trophy which earned him a place in the Indian Cricket team touring Australia in 1991-92. Although this gave a  start to his international career he was made to play only one One-Day International Match because of his inability to play onside strokes. He faced criticism for his attitude and inability. But after a gap of four years, he came back in style in the 1996 tour to England at Lord's; his test debut, scoring centuries and wickets and winning the Man of the Series Award and in the Sahara Cup, Toronto 1997 set a new World Record for 5 consecutive Man of the Match Awards.

From then Sourav has come a long way and achieved a lot - he along with Tendulkar forms the 4th Best Opening Pair in the History of One-day cricket and were involved in a World Record Opening Partnership of 252. Ganguly was named Sport star Person of the Year 1998 and won the Arjuna Award in the same year.

Ganguly was selected the Captain of the Indian cricket team in February, 2000. Under his leadership India started winning test matches and his fabulous performance lead India to world cup final in 2003. But he lost his personal form eventually and after India's failure against Australia in the Nagpur test in 2004, Ganguly was dismissed from his captaincy. Rahul Dravid succeeded him as captain. In 2006, after a dispute over team selection with coach Greg Chappell, Ganguly was dropped from the team. But after a ten months gap he was recalled to the Test team for the series against South Africa in December 2006. His tremendous performance in the series made way for a come back to the ODI team. Later Saurav was selected to the World cup Squad 2007.

Personally Sourav is a quiet, unassuming, undemonstrative man with nerves of steel. He is deeply religious and observes a fast every Tuesday. He is married to Dona, his next-door-neighbour, who is a classical dancer. He has accomplished a top place in Indian Cricket as a batsman and bowler by excelling both in One-Day Internationals and Test Matches.