Finally there is some respite for Saurav Ganguly. With the annual contracts coming to their end by 31st Oct 2008, not only the players but their fans too were worried about the placement of their heroes. There was a high speculation that Saurav will be kept in for domestic cricket only. This is one of the normal tactics of the BCCI. Instead of directly showing the door, it generally degrades cricketers to play domestic cricket thereby ousting them phase by phase.

Based on the past year’s game of Saurav, it was almost sure that either he will be shown the door or he himself will declare his withdrawal from International cricket. Though throughout the media interviews, he has been maintaining that he is not even considering retirement at this phase. And as he seemed assured, he is back into the international game again.

The selectors of the Indian team have given him a chance to play the first two tests against Australia. The first test match will begin on the 9th in Bangalore. This news brings in some fresh hopes for all the fans of Ganguly. This means that Ganguly will not be out of the international cricket arena, at least not from the test matches. His position in the ODIs is still doubtful though. With majority of cricket players too supporting him, he can come back to ODIs in full form if given a chance. The decision of selectors too is not very strong that it cannot be changed later, which means even if he does not play ODIs for the time being, he may play them in the future.

The selectors attribute this change of mind to the Irani trophy. They say that the youngsters did not meet the expectations of the BCCI. While there were some young cricketers who were keen on facing Australia, they were rejected on the grounds of not playing to their full potential. This, say the selector, brings in Saurav back to the forefront. There is no need to mention the moods of the fans of the Prince of Calcutta. Already it is a season of festival and the news ushers in double joy.

We will see two new faces in the series: Badrinath and Amit Mishra. The final team lineup for the first two matches is as follows: Anil Kumble (captain), Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, MS Dhoni (wk), S. Badrinath, Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Amit Mishra, Munaf Patel, R.P.Singh and Ishant Sharma.