Sourav Ganguly during practice in Guwahati on Friday. Telegraph pictures

Guwahati: The last time Sourav Ganguly played at the Nehru Stadium here was in 2002 — as Team India captain. Four years down the line, he has not only lost the captaincy, but also his place in the side. A big question mark also hangs over his future.

Despite the several hits his international career has taken and his all but being written off in certain quarters, the Sourav magic — if not his form — remains. This was more than underlined by the manager of the North Zone Ashok Vaswani.

“Both teams are good but a lot will depend on how Dada (Sourav) fares,” he said, while sizing up both teams after nets for the virtual Duleep Trophy semi-final between East Zone and North Zone starting here on Saturday.

The name of other internationals like SS Das, Deep Dasgupta and Rohan Gavaskar were mentioned as an afterthought.

Sourav remarked that the wicket appeared result-oriented and it would be a good toss to win.

TEAMS

North Zone (from): Mithun Minhas (captain), Mahesh Rawat, Gautam Gambhir, Akash Chopra, Ravneet Ricky, Yashpal Singh, Ashis Nehra, VRV Singh, Gagandeep Singh, Joginder Sharma, Rajesh Sharma, Vishal Bhatia.

East Zone (from): Sourav Ganguly (captain), Deep Dasgupta, Subhomoy Das, Shiv Sundar Das, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Rohan Gavaskar, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Shib Sagar Singh, Sourashish Lahiri, Debashis Mohanty, Asok Dinda and Arindam Das.