Odishatv Bureau

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: The victory against the Englishmen at Lord’s in the Natwest Tri-series final is one of the historic moments in the Indian cricket history. The Yuvi-Kaif batting show was followed by waving of the Indian jersey by the then skipper at the Lord’s balcony at the end of the series that also featured Sri Lanka along with India and hosts England.

In one of the special run-chases for Team India, the Sourav Ganguly-led side won the game by 2 runs as they chased down 326 with three balls to spare on July 13 2002. Mohammad Kaif remained unbeaten on 87 while Yuvraj scored 69. Sourav himself had scored 60 off 43 balls as an opener.

As soon as Zaheer Khan hit the winning runs, the entire Indian dressing room erupted with joy and Sourav Ganguly took his shirt off and started waving it from the Lord’s balcony.

This win was a defining moment of Indian cricket but the ‘Bengal Tiger’ feels that it was one of the biggest regrets of his cricket career.

Speaking during the launch of his book, ‘A Century is Not Enough’, the former skipper revealed that according to him the incident which has been a talking point among the cricket fans of the country should not have taken place.

“I regretted waving the shirt at Lord’s. I wouldn’t do that again, you know. My daughter sees it now and says ‘why did you do that?’. And I say, ‘because I was happy we won,” expressed Sourav Ganguly.

Ganguly further added, “I regret it because there are better ways of showing your happiness of beating England at Lords. I’m not that type of person who would take their shirt off and get agitated. I’m normally very docile, but that cricket field turned me differently.”

Earlier, Sourav Ganguly had admitted that his act was in response to Andrew Flintoff who had done the same when England had won the final ODI of a series at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai which was played a few months before the Natwest series.

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