Batting lower down the order has denied him several centuries, says former India captain Sourav Ganguly [Images], who feels VVS Laxman too has "suffered" in terms of scoring hundreds because of batting at number six.
"I have batted lower down the order for a lot of time and Rahul (Dravid) used to bat at number three and Sachin (Tendulkar) came at four. As a result, I had to bat at five or sometimes six and I missed quite a few hundreds because we did not have wicketkeeper-batsmen like Mahendra Singh Dhoni [Images] and Dinesh Kaarthick earlier," Ganguly told TV news channel CNN-IBN.
"These guys support people batting at five or six. But me and (VVS) Laxman suffered in terms of getting hundreds," he added.
The left-hander, who scored his maiden double hundred in the Bangalore Test and was the top run-getter in the series against Pakistan, said going up the order helped his batting in the just-concluded series.
"I got to bat at number four in this series and it helped me," he said.
Ganguly felt his self-belief contributed to his fine performance in the recent series, for which he was adjudged player of the series.
"I had a good year before this series in both forms of the game. So the confidence was high. When I got a hundred in Bangalore, I was determined to convert it into a double," he said.
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