Sometimes the apt gesture is about more than one person’s sense of occasion. After Australia’s ninth wicket fell on Monday afternoon, Mahendra Singh Dhoni gave control of proceedings to Sourav Ganguly. From a current skipper to a former one on his last day of Test cricket, it was a touching gesture. It was also a nod to the game, its players and its audiences, an unarticulated desire to see Ganguly as we will remember him, the man in charge, most often for better but sometimes for worse. And so the Nagpur Test ended thus: the man who presided over India’s longest winning streaks was notionally in charge of a spectacular victory moment. It was also such a Ganguly moment. Master of the off-side, maverick strategist, groomer of lost young cricketers, he also possessed an instinct and a flair for drama. Good then that he did not retire quietly to the Nagpur dressing room, even after the Bradman-esque spectacle of a last innings duck. It was also, to the day, eight years since he captained his first Test.

More than Ganguly’s cricket, it was his drama that divided his audiences into camps, with the division always very porous. Sometimes it was awesome. Those centuries on Test debut. That mastery of the off-side. Those clean sixes over long-on. But always he appeared to be aware of the occasion. He hinted as much in a recent interview. After the trauma of being dropped without being given much of a chance on an Australian tour, he said he suspected that second chances would not come his way again soon, he had to prove himself on that Lord’s debut. He did, with a century and some wickets, following it up with a consecutive century. That would be his way of grooming India out of the desolation of the lost ’90s, a decade of indifferent cricket and matchfixing scandals. To be counted, the Indian team had to perform. To perform, his young hopes — most prominently, Harbhajan Singh — had to be given enough chances to make good. To give themselves a chance, India had to match up to the best, harnessing professional support staff, learning to enjoy themselves on tour, steeling themselves for competitive aggression, especially against the Australians.

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