Deep Dasgupta

Deep Dasgupta (pronunciation (help·info); born 7 June 1977) is a former Indian cricketer who played in 8 Tests and 5 ODIs between 2001 and 2006 as the national wicketkeeper and was later replaced by Ajay Ratra. He is now a Hindi and English commentator.

An aggressive opening batsman, Dasgupta played for Bengal, where he took over as captain following the resignation of Sourav Ganguly, and was the reserve wicketkeeper for East Zone behind the national wicketkeeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.

He later joined the Indian Cricket League, where he played for the Royal Bengal Tigers. Nowadays he is a commentator.^[1]

Early life[]

Although born in Kolkata and a Bengali by birth, Dasgupta grew up in Delhi, the capital of India and that is where he got associated with the game for the first time.

Education[]

Dasgupta studied at the Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, New Delhi and gradually started doing very good as wicket keeper - batsman for his school team. He was in the special care of his school team coach always for his promising performance and hard works. He later shifted to Kolkata (although he always had a deeper connection with the city as it was his maternal uncle's house and he used to be in Kolkata on every summer vacation of his school time) and joined the Hindu College to complete his graduation.

Cricket career[]

Dasgupta started his career as an opening batsman - wicket keeper and showed the class in him in the first match itself, scoring a century on debut in Ranji Trophy against Baroda. His ability behind the stumps and on the crease placed him to become an reliable member in the Bengal Ranji Squad. Dasgupta was included in India's squad to South Africa in 2001. The news that he will make his international debut came to him around an hour before the toss as India's then wicketkeeper-batsman Sameer Dighe suffered a back spasm, and Ganguly told Dasgupta that he was going to make his Test debut at Bloemfontein. That was the same Test in which Virender Sehwag scored a century on Test debut. Deep scored 34 and 4 in that game and had a useful partnership with Sehwag in the first innings. Dasgupta's debut series was an eventful one, in which the famous incident involving Mike Denness took place. Dasgupta was one of the six cricketers along with Sachin Tendulkar, Sehwag, Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh and Shiv Sunder Das to be banned by Denness for one Test. While Tendulkar was banned for ball-tampering, Ganguly was banned for ‘inability to control the behaviour of his team’. The rest, including Dasgupta, were suspended for excessive appealing.

England were touring India for a Test series in 2001 and in the first Test the visitors scored 238 in the first innings and India replied with 469 with the help of Dasgupta's solid century.

Later he continued with Bengal in Ranji trophy. Deep Dasgupta has been one of the successful captains the Bengal Ranji team has ever had. He is only the second captain after Sambaran Banerjee to lead the team to two Ranji Trophy finals in consecutive seasons (06-07). But unfortunately both the times they lost to Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai respectively.

Cricket commentary[]

Dasgupta is currently a commentator in India and can be seen doing that very often during the Indian Premier League and was also the part of commentary team during the ICC World T20 2016 in India.

References[]

External links[]

• 2006 Interview with Deep Dasgupta for CricketFundas