How was it that David Gower arrived at the conclusion that Sourav Ganguly had the political skills to make it to the top in the International Cricket Council? Did he want to tell us, all over again, that you couldn’t fool all people for all time?

Gower, of course, is quite correct in making the point as going over history, in this context, will reveal how timely alterations of one’s identity can be attendant upon ambition.

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Ganguly’s political flexibility and nimbleness happen to be the elephant, complete with decorative trappings, in Bengal’s insular drawing rooms. His rise and rise coincided with the Left’s prolonged occupation of Writers’ Buildings, where Asoke Bhattacharjee, the Siliguri strongman, was jocularly referred to as the state’s Sourav mantri.

The sport minister, Subhas Chakrabarty, resented the partnership but insiders said his brief did not exceed nurturing the Maidan as a political constituency, apart from finding financiers.

Not that the Ganguly-Bhattacharjee association left any high cricketing point for us to remember it by, but it was quite conspicuous while it lasted, and, secrets being secrets, everyone wondered aloud what kept it going.

There were those who also said that Ganguly wasn’t someone the Leftists liked to snub, or deny. So, off the field, he would have had a good time. Unfortunately, these stories seldom stretch to everlasting happiness. This one ended when Ganguly’s friends looked like overstaying their welcome.

Mr Average Man never gets to know how people change with time, though. And when the Trinamul Congress gave the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and its allies their marching orders, capturing power on the slogan of parivartan, it was doubtless a major surprise that it was Mamata Banerjee who negotiated Ganguly’s ascent to the highest administrative position in the Cricket Association of Bengal.

Just a polite appeal to the new chief minister had clinched it. It was not as if her party was entirely unrepresented in the CAB’s power set-up, but a situation was contrived dexterously enough for all resistance to disappear as if at a magician’s command.

If anyone inside the Trinamul Congress ever asked her anything about how Ganguly’s previous loyalty squared with the new one, the answer was kept from us.

Then, a few years rolled by and Ganguly, we came to be told, had become the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India with the blessings of Amit Shah, the Bharatiya Janata Party stalwart who also happens to be India’s home minister.

Ganguly has not denied meeting him before the coronation, and Shah’s son, Jay, is part of the combination now ruling the roost. He will not seem to have been the CAB’s best president if cricket is thought of, but that is another point. He can keep up with the times and cosy up to the right kind of people: that is the leading light of our times.