Batting lower down the order has denied him several centuries, says former India
captain Sourav Ganguly, who feels VVS Laxman too has "suffered"
in terms of scoring hundreds because of batting at number six.
"I have batted lower down the order for a lot of time and Rahul Dravid
used to bat at number three 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 Kaarthick earlier," Ganguly told CNN-IBN.
"These guys support people batting at five or six. But
me and VVS Laxman suffered in terms of getting hundreds,"
he added.
The left-hander, who scored his maiden double hundred in the Bangalore Test
and was the top run-getter in the series against Pakistan, said going up the
order helped his batting in the just-concluded series.
"I got to bat at number four in this series and it helped me," he
said.
Ganguly felt his self-belief contributed to his fine performance
in the recent series, for which he was adjudged player of the series.
"I had a good year before this series in both forms of the game. So the
confidence was high. When I got a hundred in Bangalore, I was determined to
convert it into a double," he said.
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