Sourav shows his sweet side

First Test: The Lord Snooty of popular legend bears no resemblance to the real man, says India's mercurial captain

Sourav Ganguly is known as the Prince of Bengal. If this is slightly beneath the status accorded to Sachin Tendulkar, who was deified long ago, it still speaks volumes about the man, the job he does and the country he comes from. It is also way above the other ranks he is cast in – the Prince of Darkness or Lord Snooty.

Ganguly is a batsman of the highest pedigree, in every sense, and the captain of the Indian cricket team. The way he and they are going anything might be possible; elevation to a kingship, say.

He has something about him as a captain, no mistake. He is combative and protective, wily and guarded, demonstrative and assertive. Sometimes he is a pain in the neck, the bottom and most other parts of the anatomy, with the ability to get right up the noses of the opposition.

He conveys an air of easy superiority. Hence the bestowal of the Snooty sobriquet, though Sourav would probably think the man who came up with it was from below stairs. There are no flies on Ganguly. Nobody will put one over on him easily, umpires, rivals, smart-aleck interviewers. Somehow, he has the indefinable characteristics of a natural leader (and he knows it). After 23 Test matches in charge, India are his team.

He has a reputation for haughtiness and, well, lordliness which does not square easily with a gentlemanly and co-operative demeanour. He can be banal to the point of dismissiveness at press conferences and you can see him wondering why another damn-fool question has been asked.

Last Saturday at Lord's, Ganguly, who had made an explosively radiant half-century, sat on the dressing-room balcony with his feet resting on the rail as his side chased 326 to win. He looked as relaxed as, well, as the Prince of Bengal at cocktails, but he was watching all right, and the win has given him an edge for the Test series.

"I had been around in the team for five years when I was made captain," he said. "I had one simple aim and that was to strengthen the areas we were weak in, by looking for players for that position and backing them. The most important thing a captain can do is to back his players.

"I enjoy the honour of being captain of India but there have been times when I have wondered if it is worth it. I am the captain on the field but in our country there are 100,000 other captains outside, perhaps more. Sometimes that affects me, but I have to get on with the job I have been entrusted with.

"This a team now with some spirit. We are all friends. I am the captain but I am their friend as well. They know that. We are in this together. The win at Lord's was special, you would only chase that total maybe one in 10 times. But it was the way that we fought. That is what's important to me, how we play."

Ganguly is a man of contrasts. He concedes that he has moods – brought on by who knows what – but he can smile the guileless smile of a little boy. Two years ago he was Lancashire's overseas player and there were all manner of stories about his arrogant detachment from the team. He speaks only of what a good set of chaps they were, Freddie Flintoff, Neil Fairbrother and "the best of them all", Michael Atherton.

For one so clearly self-assured, though not, it should be stressed, self-possessed – the two are entirely different – he is astonishingly self-critical. Or perhaps the latter attribute complements and enhances the former. "I would like one day to have another chance at county cricket," he said. "I feel as though I didn't score the runs I ought to have done for an inter-national batsman. I owe something."

And talking of his poor form last year, when he averaged 22 in Test matches, he was quite candid. "I was not batting well. I did not feel as if I was especially out of form but it was not good enough. I try to separate my batting and my captaincy completely so that one does not affect the other, but sometimes I suppose they must have done. I am in much better form now, I feel good but I know I have to score more centuries. I want to lead from the front."

He has made regular appearances before the beak for misdemeanours on the field. Last winter he was reprimanded by referee Mike Denness for failing to control his players in the notorious match at Port Elizabeth, and in the year before that he was penalised three times for dissent. They might try to call him a rich poor boy but he cares. Maybe too much.

Like Tendulkar, who is nine months younger, Ganguly was a boyhood batting prodigy from an affluent home. He was captain of India Under-15s and made his first-class debut for Bengal when he was 17. Two years later he was selected for India's tour of Australia and played one limited-overs international.

Afterwards his form had peaks (a maiden domestic hundred which was a double) and troughs (he was 165th in the Ranji Trophy averages in 1996). It was in a trough that he was picked for the 1996 England tour. How the Indian media, which make their English counterparts look like models of understanding and propriety, carped.

Injury forced his debut in the Second Test that summer at Lord's. He made a century and followed it with another at Trent Bridge. He had five hundreds (and a 99) in his first 25 Test innings. Ganguly has not sustained that, but he has also become one of the most redoubtable one-day opening batsmen, with 18 centuries.

It is 16 years and 18 series since India won away. But it is coming. This spring in the Caribbean they went 1-0 up against the West Indies only to lose 2-1. They had preceded that with single wins against Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka.

Ganguly's greatest moment as captain so far was the 2-1 home win against Australia early last year. India were 1-0 down and following on in the Second Test. They proceeded to win one of the greatest of all matches and clinched the series in a spine-tingling decider. Nobody who was not Australian wanted them to lose. Ganguly held his nerve.

He is a longtime Anglophile. He has come here most years since the late Eighties, has a house in Harrow and loves London. He seems genuinely bemused at the suggestion that he might be haughty. "That is not so. How could the team play for me? I have my own methods, my own thoughts and I will always follow my own path but I am not distant at all. On the field I have to concentrate on the game." He ran through his bowlers and praised them to the heavens, though did not seek to hide his frustration that the country's best seamer, Javagal Srinath, has retired. "I don't know why. I have tried to persuade him. He wouldn't listen.

"Our bowlers can do it. They have more than you think and our batting picks itself. That will not fail." He wants to beat England (they were the victims in 1986 during India's last away win) and will reassess his own position after the World Cup. "I think we might surprise you," he said. And the Prince of Bengal smiled a mischievous smile which could have been from Dennis the Menace.