Kolkata Knight Riders and their Problems

Kolkata Knight Riders is the only team in IPL 2009 who are performing poorly so far in the tournament. If you look at the other teams in the tournament, you can see that they have at least put on some good performances and won some matches. In fact, seventh-placed Mumbai Indians have 4 wins to their credit from 10 matches. However, Shah Rukh Khan-owned Kolkata Knight Riders have only 1 win from 11 matches. Can you believe that?

Well, it does not matter whether you believe it or not. The fact is that they are currently at the bottom of the point table with 3 points from 11 games, and their performance does not reflect the strength of the side. The main problem is that Kolkata Knight Riders have become more concerned with business, rather than on field performance. They bought Bangladesh vice Captain Mashrafee Mortaza only on business perspective. They only tried to capture the television audience of Bangladesh (especially Capital Dhaka) in what the tv rating of Kolkata matches would increase. Team management did not have any idea whether they really needed Mashrafee or how they would use Mashrafee in the tournament. Now, we can see that Kolkata can not even use him because of his high auction price.

Before the start of IPL 2009, other teams were concerned about their squad, while Kolkata Knight Riders management was more concerned about organizing a competition through which they would select their cheerleaders. I do not know whether cheerleaders could anyhow cheer up their players to perform better in the tournament. Moreover, their coach tried to keep his team as well as himself in the centre of the media, by introducing his multi-captain theory.

The most important thing is the leadership. I do not know what was going on in their mind when they stripped off India’s most successful captain Sourav Ganguly from Kolkata captaincy, and on what basis they gave the captaincy to Brendon McCullum. No doubt, Brendon McCullum is a very talented batsman, but it does not mean that he would also become a good captain as well. Here, my point is that if Kolkata thinks that Ganguly does not have anything to offer for the team then keep him in the sideline, but if they still think that Ganguly has many things to offer for Kolkata, then why don’t they give him the captaincy? What is wrong with his leadership skill?

Shah Rukh Khan and his team management might answer these questions better. What I would like to say is that Kolkata Knight Riders should focus more on cricket, rather than business. Otherwise, Kolkata Knight Riders would always remain an ‘Anna Kournikova of tennis’ who was always in the limelight, but only for the wrong reasons.