Is Shahrukh Khan responsible for Knight Riders debacle?

Knight Riders lost again, and this time almost devastated by the great duo Sachin and Sanath by Mumbai Indians. Well, the match started and within first 5 overs, it seemed like the Knight Riders were out of the game and out of the ideas to withstand the onslaught so mercilessly delivered by the great duo. In fact, one started to think again the strategic planning done behind the doors for first throwing the idea of having four captains by their great coach John Buchanan, then stripping Sourabh Ganguli, the most successful cricket captain India ever had, and then giving the captain's hat to Brendon McCullum, one of the most flamboyant striker of the ball. Well, the burden of the captainship is already showing on Brendon McCullum as he is not really playing his natural game and so getting out everytime playing a different game that he does not know.

Shahrukh Khan has left no stone unearthed to market his team, but he has forgotten one basic thing that it is a game and ultimately people likes the team the most which wins. He has got the best dressed team, the best marketing savvy team, the cheerleader euphoria generated before the start of IPL by running a reality show on NDTV Imagine, slamming the great Sunil Gavaskar for his lack of knowledge of cricket (!!!), creating controversies on the captainship issue, well the Knight Riders topped the media for all those news items, making it the hottest team in IPL circuit, but when the team is on the field, they are just not delivering enough to be able to win.

Today, they even lost to Royal Challengers Bangalore (considered one of the weaker team in IPL), thus proving once again the KKR is like a bubble which can burst even with a soft feather touch. Now, Shahrukh Khan has left South Africa for India saying that he will return to SA only when his team wins. That means he is still trying to keep his team on top of the media reports even though his team is losing matches on trot.

I think it's high team Shahrukh should reinstate Sourabh as captain of KKR and reignite the passion of cricket to the cricket-crazy Kolkatans, and thus let the confidence come back to his team so that he can change their attitude to winning ways.

Good luck..KKR...Brendon...Shahrukh...and my favorite cricketer of all time...Dada for his dadagiri.

© 2009 Ranjan Kumar