Interview: Sourav Ganguly

Sourav Ganguly likes Lord's. He scored a century there on his Test debut for India, it was at Lord's earlier this month that he was involved in perhaps the most improbable victory in one-day international history in the final of the NatWest series and on Thursday he leads his country for the first time at headquarters in a Test match.

But this particular day, after the Indians have spent the morning in the Nursery End nets, he is not enjoying his time at the ground. It is the setting for a bad-hair day. A photographer has set up a makeshift studio in the indoor cricket school to take the official portfolio of the India players. The snapper wants him to remove his cap, but Ganguly will not. "Take it with the cap on," he insists. The photographer is equally insistent the hat should come off. Every other Indian player has been cap-free, he says, and these are for the archive; history is being recorded.

"No, keep it on," says Ganguly, and his tone makes it clear there is to be no movement in these negotiations. "Nasser Hussain would never allow himself to be photographed without a hat on." Yes, the photographer argues, but Hussain has something to hide: a rapidly receding hairline. Whereas the Ganguly coiffure can only be described as luxurious, albeit a little flattened after a morning under a helmet.

"That's very true," grins Ganguly, whipping off his hat, running his hand through his thick black crop and cheerfully posing for a couple of uncovered shots. "Yes, that is the difference, you're right."

Talk about competitive. Indeed, some Indian commentators reckon Ganguly the most driven of all captains of their national team, a man almost antipodean in his aggressive pursuit of victory. While it is an approach that has, as the NatWest final indicated, toughened up his charges, it is also one that has brought him into conflict with authorities and opponents alike.

He was fined by the International Cricket Council after a one-day match against Zimbabwe for appealing that was not so much excessive as bordering on the psychotic. Steve Waugh, after Ganguly's India had beaten the Australians in the epic series of 2000, said of him: "I can't say I get on well with him, I'd be lying if I said that."

Neither does it help the Ganguly PR that this tigerish determination is married to a certain natural hauteur. If not quite Ranjitsinhji, he is as posh as a pin; hailing from the wealthiest of Bengali families, and since he emerged as a teenaged batting prodigy in 1990 he has carried the soubriquet of the Prince of Calcutta.

The Aussies, in particular, bridled at being out-battled by a toff and dismissed him as "the most unpopular man in cricket". His fellow countrymen find it hard to decide what to make of him. When he led them to victory over Waugh's world champions he was so popular in India that there was a stand-up row in the Bengali state legislature involving delegates furious that no official congratulations had been dispatched in his direction. Yet when his team lost to South Africa last winter the director of the Indian cricket board faxed him a letter in which he fumed that the game was being led by Ganguly down a spiral of terminal decline. No wonder then, with such insecurity circling his leadership, that the man is somewhat circumspect when he engages with the press. Though you imagine that even if the world was united in praise of him, Ganguly is unlikely to challenge Terry Venables for the genial conversationalist of the year trophy.

Distant, aloof, cagey: socially, he is about as warm as a lump of halibut plucked straight from the freezer. And though the eyes smile with amused recognition at the direction questions might be heading, he refuses resolutely to be drawn. Thus when asked whether revenge is motivating his players in this series, a keenness to right perceived wrongs inflicted on them by the authorities at Lord's, particularly over the banning of Virender Sehwag from one of the Tests the last time the teams met, he says: "I don't think I should make a comment on that. It was in the past. Mistakes do happen and life goes on. That's all I'd say."

And on Steve Waugh's brusque assessment of their relationship? "Actually, it is not a competition to see who can make the most friends. It is about winning cricket matches." And of the lack of patience shown by his cricket board last winter? "It's a high-profile job. People expect a lot out of you, and if you're doing well, they are behind you. And if you aren't then the pressures build up."

But then, the weekend before last, a couple of intriguing cracks emerged in the carapace Ganguly has worn since his arrival in England. In the adrenaline rush of his team's amazing victory in the one-day series, Ganguly not only took off his cap, he let his hair down. He was seen dancing around on the balcony at Lord's, screaming obscenities of victory. Clearly it meant a lot to him. There was history there.

"The English team toured India in December last year and a lot of things were written about Nasser Hussain and his team," he said after the game. "The most surprising thing was that for the first time in the history of cricket I heard about a moral victory. We won the series then, but the feeling was as if we had lost. There were heaps of praise for Nasser - who I think is a fine captain - and his team. I was fascinated by the way the English media supported their team." Ouch. Digs and barbs in every sentence.

"The happiest thing for me is that we could celebrate our win at Lord's in the same way they did in Mumbai," he said. "It's a competitive game and this is what makes it special." And there was the rub. Standing on the balcony, Ganguly removed his shirt and waved it about his head. It brought a strong reprimand from his predecessor Kapil Dev, who said India captains should be more dignified. But the point was clear: this was a parody of Andrew Flintoff's football-style celebration when the Lancashire player took the final Indian wicket to win a one-day game in Mumbai. Flintoff and Ganguly have regularly come into conflict and this was but the latest episode in a long- running spat. Even when attempting to dead-bat questions about Flintoff, he cannot help himself from having a couple of sly digs. "When I first came he was a young boy trying to make his way, suffering with injuries, maybe overweight," he says of Flintoff. "Now he is doing well, I'm happy for him."

Happy was not how Ganguly had looked in the winter, when there were several eye-balling confrontations between the pair which at times looked as if they might have degenerated into full-scale fisticuffs. "That happens on a cricket field," he says. "People have a go at each other. That's fair, that's fine. It's called Test cricket. It's not a day in the park. For me, that's fair, that's fine." Next he will be telling us it was all immediately forgotten and they went for a beer together afterwards. "Yes, we did actually."

Whatever the bland denials, there is more to Ganguly's dispute with Flintoff than the standard sledging. And it helps explain why the India captain is even more bristlingly determined than usual to do well in England. The two were team-mates at Lancashire for the 2000 season; it was not Ganguly's finest hour. On the field, though he played well in several one-day games, he averaged 30 and took only four wickets in the championship. Of more relevance, though, were his relationships off it. Following two extremely popular overseas players - Wasim Akram and Muttiah Muralitharan - Ganguly's natural demeanour did not play well in the down-to-earth environs of the Old Trafford dressing room. There were accusations of aloofness and arrogance, suggestions that this was a mercenary going through the motions to pick up his paycheque.

The ill will generated was publicly demonstrated during a day/night match in which he had carelessly run out two team-mates. When Ganguly reached his fifty he raised his bat to the balcony seeking the acknowledgment of his colleagues. He found there was no one there, not a single Lancashire player to accept his salute; the others had pointedly emptied the balcony the moment he had reached 49.

"I didn't have a good time with Lancashire in 2000," he recalls. "Probably I'd played too much cricket and should have taken a rest, but I went there when the offer came because I had always had an ambition to play the county game in England. And I was a bit jaded. And I didn't do myself justice. I want to put that right before I finish my career."

Which won't be easy, with the Indian cricket calendar now so full it will soon require 13 months to fulfil a year's fixtures. "It's becoming difficult, no, I'd say impossible to come here and play county cricket because of international commitments," Ganguly says. "But I would love to do it again. Before I finished." But why? After playing in front of 90,000 in Calcutta, surely turning out in front of a few dozen at Southport can hold little in the way of inspiration. "That's difficult, actually, when you turn up to play for a county, and you haven't many people watching," he says.

"That's why every cricketer wants to play international cricket. First of all you're playing for your country, secondly there's a lot of media attention and thirdly, for India, there is so much support for us, especially in England. So you know what you are doing is important, and that motivates you, helps you get going."

So why, then, is he so anxious to return to the county game? "Oh, it is very simple actually," he says. "I feel I have a lot to prove to a lot of people in England." And as Nasser Hussain's team is about to discover, Sourav Ganguly with a lot to prove can be a dangerous opponent indeed.