Ganguly denies comments appearing in Bengali daily

With India posting a fighting 313 for eight against Australia at the close of the third days play at Bangalores Chinnaswamy Stadium, south paw Sourav Ganguly, who contributed a solid 45 to the cause, said on Saturday that he had never made any of the controversial statements being attributed to him by the Bengali daily Aajkal with regard to his omission from the Indian team in 2005-06 and the negative statements against several team mates.

Bangalore, Oct.11 : With India posting a fighting 313 for eight against Australia at the close of the third day's play at Bangalore's Chinnaswamy Stadium, south paw Sourav Ganguly, who contributed a solid 45 to the cause, said on Saturday that he had never made any of the controversial statements being attributed to him by the Bengali daily Aajkal with regard to his omission from the Indian team in 2005-06 and the negative statements against several team mates.

"The reports of an interview from a Bengali daily published in other newspapers are false. I have not given such an interview to anyone. I request you to clarify with me before publishing views from other sources," Ganguly'said in a statement that was read out in the press box by an Indian team official.

Aajkal had earlier quoted him as saying: "I have played badly in only one series (in Sri Lanka). Yet every Tom, Dick and Harry is playing in the team. There are players who haven't scored in the last three series for India, even for the last one year. There are some who have changed their hairstyle more than they have scored for India."

He was also quoted as saying that being dropped for the Irani Cup prompted him to call it a day and that he was tired of constantly being made the scapegoat in India's failures.

Dilip Vengsarkar, the former chairman of the selection committee which dropped Ganguly for the recent Irani Cup, said Ganguly will get "more than what he asked for", after the series is over.

"I won't answer him now as this is not the right time because India are in the middle of a Test series [against Australia] and it might affect the focus of the team," Vengsarkar said.

Sunil Gavaskar said Ganguly should not have made these comments ahead of a crucial Test series.

ANI