SA T20: Can Dada live up to hype on his role as franchise head coach?

As the high-profile head coach of Pretoria Capitals in the SA T20 League in December, Sourav Ganguly, the 'Dada' of Indian cricket, will have the spotlight trained on him. The Capitals, owned by the JSW Group who are also co-owners of IPL franchise Delhi Capitals, named him with much fanfare after previous incumbent Jonathon Trott left the role after just one season.

“The Prince is all set to bring a royal flair to the Capitals camp! We are ecstatic to announce Sourav Ganguly as our new head coach. The Centurion awaits,” the team management announced on their Instagram handle. It will hence be a heavyweight dugout for the team which ended up with just two wins in 10 matches last season as former South Africa great Shaun Pollock will be his assistant coach.

Asked by regional media in Kolkata how he foresees the challenge, the former India captain said lightheartedly: ‘’I have always enjoyed staying close to the action.’’ There have been occasions in the past, like in a recent interview with PTI, that Ganguly had expressed a latent desire to coach the Indian team some day but truth be told — he has not necessarily spelt instant success in the world of franchise cricket so far.

Named as a mentor of the rebranded Delhi Capitals ahead of the 2019 IPL season with Ricky Ponting as head coach, Ganguly was credited with forging a good chemistry with the then upcoming Indian troika of Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant and Prithvi Shaw. The Capitals showed a turnaround in their performance graph in the first three-year cycle and finished a runners-up in 2020, but things started falling apart thereafter and Ponting was let go after the 2024 season.

 As the Delhi Capitals’ performance started showing a dip, questions were raised about the return on investment on both Ganguly and Ponting – two of the modern legends of the game. The co owners of Delhi Capitals: JSW Group and GMR Holdings worked out a somewhat strange ‘split management’ theory by which they will take turns to be at the helm of their cricket properties and Ganguly – being an appointee of the JSW Group – was sidelined for all practical purposes this year.

Named as the Director of Cricket for JSW, he was in charge of the Delhi Capitals women’s team in the last Women’s Premier League (WPL) but the task will be cut out for him now with the Pretoria outfit. The dynamics of franchise cricket holds out no surefire success recipe for famous coaches while lesser names have often gelled extremely well with their respective teams – like a Ashis Nehra with Gujarat Titans. The recent example of Rahul Dravid, whose tenure with Rajasthan Royals began on an underwhelming note earlier this year after a T20 World Cup triumph, is a case in point.

 Ganguly, who is looking to make a return to cricket administration as well (he is well poised to have a second innings as the president of Cricket Association of Bengal), will be leaving for South Africa early next month to be a part of the auction for the SA T20 League on 9 September.  The importance of SA T20, after a somewhat tentative start in 2023, has been growing as six of the IPL ownerships have invested in teams there.

 Apart from Pretoria Capitals, here is a look at the others: Durban Super Giants (RPSG Sports Private Limited, owners of Lucknow Super Giants); Joburg Super Kings (Chennai Super Kings Cricket Limited, owners of CSK); MI Cape Town (Rise Worldwide Limited, owners of Mumbai Indians); Paarl Royals (Royals Sports Group, owners of Rajasthan Royals) and Sunrisers Eastern Cape (Sun TV Network Limited, owners of Sunrisers Hyderabad).