As Team Mamata disintegrates, Sourav Ganguly clears the air on his ‘role’: ‘Did not approach Yusuf Pathan’

FSea-ear team up bharat cricket chieftain Sourav Ganguly on sat rejected as untrue a report that claimed he had acted as an emissary for the Trinamool Congress to ask Baharampur MP Yusuf Pathan, also a former cricketer, to vacate his Lok Sabha seat so that former CM Mamata Banerjee could contest a by-election from the constituency.In a signed statement dated June 6 and addressed to "all the media houses", Ganguly said the allegations, “in so far as they concern me, are in reckless disregard of the truth”. He was referring to a front-page report in Anandabazar Patrika on June 4 about ‘Mamata heading to Delhi for direct fight’.The report had said Ganguly, who has rejected several offers in the past to enter politics, was approached to convey Mamata Banerjee's message to Pathan, and that Pathan had declined to resign for her.What Ganguly said"I was never requested/asked by Ms Mamata Banerjee to convey any message from her to Mr Yusuf Pathan, whether to step down from his parliamentary seat, as alleged or otherwise or at all," Ganguly said in the statement."I never approached or contacted Mr Yusuf Pathan with any such or other request/message. As such, the question of Mr Yusuf Pathan responding in the manner as alleged in the article does not and cannot arise," he added.Ganguly further said he had "never been involved in political matters at any stage with any one concerned", and urged the media “not to fall prey to rumours and speculations without verifying the correctness of the facts printed and published”.Neither Pathan nor the TMC leadership has issued an on-record response to the report.Pathan, a member of India's 2011 World Cup-winning squad, won the seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, defeating veteran Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury by a significant 85,000 votes. He and Ganguly were briefly teammates at the Kolkata Knight Riders, too, in the IPL.Dire times for MamataThe report surfaced amid speculation over how Banerjee might return to electoral office after the TMC's defeat in the 2026 West Bengal assembly elections, in which the party was restricted to 80 seats in the 294-member House and she lost her own seat to Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP.It also came as the party faces one of the gravest crises in its three-decade history.This week, 58 of its 80 MLAs rebelled, with the assembly speaker recognising expelled legislator Ritabrata Banerjee as the Leader of the Opposition — a move the TMC has called "illegal" and plans to challenge in the high court.When the leadership convened a meeting at Banerjee's Kalighat residence on Friday, only eight non-rebelling MLAs attended.