December 15, 2007	Saturday	Zilhaj 4, 1428

KOLKATA, Dec 14: Former Test captain and veteran batsman Saurav Ganguly, who was named the man of the series in India’s recent home Tests against Pakistan, has attributed his remarkable achievement to batting at No.4 spot.

Ganguly, generally a No.5 or 6 batsman, walked in at No.4 in three of the six innings against Pakistan, posting scores of 46, 239 and 91 from that position, and thought he could have had more Test centuries had he batted higher throughout.

“I got to bat at No. 4 in this (Pakistan) series and it helped me,” he told CNN-IBN after enjoying his most successful three-match series in close to a decade.

“I have batted lower down the order for a lot of time and Rahul [Dravid] used to bat at No. 3 and Sachin [Tendulkar] came at four. As a result, I had to bat at five or sometimes six and I missed quite a few hundreds because we did not have wicketkeeper-batsmen like Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Dinesh Karthik earlier.

“These guys support people batting at five or six.

But me and [VVS] Laxman suffered in terms of getting hundreds,” he added.

Ganguly started his Test career at No. 3 but managed only 16 more chances in that position. He has batted at No. 4 in 18 innings but the majority of his career has been from Nos. 5 (84) and 6 (39).—Agencies