The left-hander scratched around for 43 balls to make 17 for East Zone against Central Zone in a one-day match in Jaipur Monday, but worse was to follow for the beleaguered Ganguly.

Bowling the last delivery of the match with the rivals needing five runs to win, the medium-pacer was smashed for a six over the cover region by rookie batsman Dishant Yagnik.

It reminded many of Pakistani great Javed Miandad's last-ball six against Indian seamer Chetan Sharma in the memorable Australasia Cup final in Sharjah in 1986.

A stunned Ganguly walked off the field and rushed to catch a flight to his hometown of Kolkata even as teammates awaited the next match in Jaipur on Thursday.

Ganguly's future had generated heated debate across cricket-mad India ever since he was sacked as captain and dumped from the team following a public spat with coach Greg Chappell in September.

Chappell wrote in an e-mail to Indian cricket chiefs that was subsequently leaked to the public that Ganguly was "unfit" to lead India and questioned his commitment to the team.

The selectors have said there is no place for Ganguly, 33, because they were looking at building a team for the future.

Ganguly, however, nurses hopes of playing in the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies and wants to prove his form in domestic cricket.

He remains India's most successful Test captain with 21 wins and has scored 5,221 runs from 88 Tests with 12 centuries.

He also has 10,123 runs from 279 one-dayers with 22 hundreds.