If John Buchanan expected to be treated differently after essentially pushing what appears to be a shadow of Greg Chappell’s agenda, he was sadly mistaken.
It was a strange press conference with definitive undertones. Why two such dynamically opposed people were placed on one podium with obvious body language that suggested that the team dressing room was far from harmonious seems baffling?
After all, why would Shah Rukh Khan want to shoot himself in the foot, especially when he must now rely on a lot more than home crowd and support from home away from home?
The question is not even whether Sourav Ganguly merits his place in the Kolkata Knight Riders team. Rather it is this - why was a press conference held when Buchanan, who was previously coach of the Australian team, appear to mumble his way through this new found theory that he seems keen to attempt on the team that will anyway be rotating their players due to their international commitments?
Buchanan appears to be carrying out a theory originally intended for a stable Australian line up. But the situation in the IPL is totally different. With so many foreign players with their own national duties, the team has not had regular faces, the ones that would be outright match winners, let alone lead the team.
It is alright to say Ganguly is not fit for the Twenty20 game for so and so reason. But to actually seat himself besides Ganguly and then, discuss his theory with the media like explaining a complicated maths equation to students, it was literally making a mockery of the situation.
Would it not have been more prudent if this decision, or proposal was announced after it was discussed intricately within the team management that includes Shah Rukh Khan, owner of the KKR team? There appears a rather consoling mood in the dressing room and none of it appeared to appease the Bengali speaking public of Kolkata.
With Shah Rukh Khan now having to specifically state for calming the public that Sourav will be his “main man” and no decision would be made without him, this whole public charade of Dada’s body language behaviour that let him say whatever he could not and did not want to, of Buchanan hugging Dada - a waste of human emotion, and the whole effigy burning, Bengali berating drama that ended up providing more security for Buchanan.
Greg Chappell found out the nasty side of Indian passions when he suggested Ganguly step down from the captaincy and eventually from the team. But this scenario is different in that there is more than the ego of two individuals involved.
With the IPL being a city based venture, it makes business sense, if Shah Rukh Khan is shrewd enough, that having Dada at the head, especially in a year when the IPL has to move out of India and yet franchisees must count on their home team base to support the team that is miles apart, will ensure the Kolkata cricket fans are keyed into the affair. That though may disappoint Brendon McCullum who sounded enthusiastic about the prospect of leading the team.
While everyone’s talking about the fact that television viewer ship will compensate for the actual action in the cities, South Africa can be too far to connect. Why would SRK want to disconnect the one regional line that will keep his fans interested, especially when there is no concrete plan of action and all that is on offer is more cooks to spoil an already muddled broth! How uninspiring!
