Not content with being an ordinary batsman and terrible fielder, the man described by his own website as ” Philosopher Prince” has come out and said some bad things about his teammates, you know, the same guys he’s spent the past decade in the trenches with.

I have played badly in only one series (in Sri Lanka),” the Aajkal interview said. “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.

I am really struggling to understand the motivaton for Sourav’s comments. Perhaps it’s a cultural difference that I’m struggling to understand. In Australia, the value of mateship is regarded very highly. We expect our players to respect their team mates to the detriment of all others. Often they’ll take a seige mentality against the press, refusing interviews and avoiding questions that would require a negative answer about a collegue. We’re fine with this and in truth would rather be lied to than hear them rat out a mate.

A good example is when Warney allegedly was picked up on stump mic saying that Scott Muller “can’t bowl, can’t throw”, we were quite happy with the explanation that it was in fact Joe the cameraman who made the remarks. This was scandalous at the time and still is 8 years later, yet still has nothing on what Sourav sprouts from his princely orifice.

Gangers has since come out and denied the comments, personally I’m hoping this goes down as well as Michael Vaughan’s denial of using the word Fredalo in a Guardian interview, where they categorically backed their journalist to the point of publishing an mp3 of the interview on their website. Oops.

Then again perhaps Sourav is just a d’ick. After all, the guy couldn’t even read out his own denial!

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