Kontroversial Knights

Cut to winter 2009. Late on a Sunday evening,Dalhousie square,the office district of Kolkata is unusually abuzz. Traffic personnel yell at cars,policemen shoo away groups of enthusiastic youngsters and a restless crowd at the gates of the usually quiet Mohun Bagan grounds,tell you something is cooking. Inside,Sourav Ganguly,nattily dressed in a black suit is facing a crowd of hundred as a quiz master for the grand finale shoot of Dadagiri,a popular quiz show in a Bengali channel. A little after midnight,the crowd bursts into wild cheering: Shah Rukh Khan,late by over five hours,has walked into the football stadium to meet Ganguly. The crowd goes in to raptures as their two favourite idols come together. Sourav Ganguly was,after all,the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders,SRK’s team.

While Ganguly’s omission was hardly a matter of surprise,the way it was done has brought Khan’s PR machinery under sharp criticism. “Shah Rukh Khan should have sorted out this issue before the auction. He could have gracefully offered him a mentor’s role,like Vijay Mallya has done to Anil Kumble for Royal Challengers. If SRK did not want Ganguly on board,they should have thought it through before. This is a miscalculation on the part of people handling Kolkata Knight Riders,” says Subir Malik,lead keyboardist,of music band Parikrama. Prahlad Kakkar,adman,says,“Like Anil Kumble,Sourav Ganguly too should have gracefully made an exit. He has a place in history and everyone’s heart,but clearly not the team.” “The so-called perfect pair,SRK-Ganguly didn’t exactly work in the past,so maybe it was time for Kolkata Knight Riders to try a new player,” says actor Shekhar Suman.

While Khan is now washing his hands off the mess by shifting the blame to the”’cricketing brains” in his management team,he seems to be in a placatory mood,referring to Ganguly as his younger brother. Famously,earlier when John Buchanan,the then coach of KKR had suggested multiple captains for the team,Khan had intervened on Ganguly’s behalf,saying,“There will be no KKR without Dada.”

Facebook fan pages and websites have led themselves to heated arguments over the new KKR team. “If SRK really wanted Sourav to be a part of the team as a special advisor then he should have sent him feelers before the auction. These talks now seem like damage control tactics,” says Sushmit Chowdhury,a Sourav Ganguly fan. “The IPL is a owner-based game. It’s run on a business model and not emotions. The owner will always see his profit. Shah Rukh Khan is a businessman at the end of the day,and he has to look at his interests. But this controversy could have been avoided,had it been handled more maturely,” says Akhil Kumar,boxer and medallist at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. (With inputs from Express Features Service)