Manchester United of IPL: Kolkata Knight Riders and some reasons why I like it

The Manchester United of IPL: The Kolkata Knight Riders:
My allegiance hasn’t changed and I still love the Mumbai Indians. But if you look at their team composition of KKR (Kolkata Knight Riders) which is somehow weak on paper and their performance last year you may not have a world beating team. Nor would you expect them to challenge the Mumbai Indians ,Bangalore Royal Challengers ,Delhi Daredevils who seem to be my pick for the season as favorites after the first round of the IPL2.
But if ever you wanted to look at the euphoria or the pre-match buzz generated by any team in terms of promotion, marketing glitz and having the ability to be in the news its KKR.Be it the multi-captaincy row involving John Buchanan and Sourav Ganguly which seemed to be a played up phenomenon so as to gradually break the news that Sourav Ganguly the prince of Kolkata was not going to be captaining Kolkata Knight Riders. What their performance over the last couple of years also taught was though the essence of the team and local flavor was important ,performance in the game is a key metric of success and with so much money at stake tough decisions would be taken.
Or the reality TV Show on Knights and Angels the hunt for cheerleaders for KKR on NDTV Imagine SRK managed to get the new cricket viewer the Indian Female/Women into the game. I guess I know why STAR Tv has signed on to support the KKR.Now being a little cheesy going by their performance in the first match there doesn’t seem to be much cheering for them to do.I guess a reality TV Show to select the best cricketing talent would be a better bet next year.
However I salute the marketing acumen of Shahrukh Khan who is really witty with his words and has so brilliantly capitalized upon his global popularity and rubbed it upon his team.So even though Andrew Flintoff may be worth 1.54 million as the most expensive player while leading the charge brigade in capetown,SRK Stole all thunder.
If there was a Manchester United of Cricket its already Kolkata Knight Riders. With brands like Nokia,Tag Hueur Reebok and Sprite and one of the coolest looking jerseys in black and golden apart from the delhi daredevils who look ubercool in Blue and Red they seem to have euphoria going for them. With the only team having a tiger mascot for them and a catchy jingle Korbo Korbo Jeetbo le ,compared to say Chennai Super Kings whose Hindi song may not be even understood in Chennai,the team has it all.
There is a case in point where allocating Shahrukh Khan an IPL Team for abroad called London NRI’s Eleven, Durbans Indian Riders or Aussie Indo Juggernaut would have created even more global euphoria and sponshorship for his team,simply going by the euphoric popularity SRK has abroad.I was watching this interview on NDTV where the sports anchor Sonali chander quipped why does the Reebok KKR jersey Khan 12 sell more than any other jersey in IPL even though it was of SRK an actor and owner of a team rather than say a Sachin Tendulkar or Mahindra Singh Dhoni.Well the answer is unanimous SRK the brand is much bigger than KKR the team.
His sense of humour is at its best when he was asked with Shipla Shetty and Priety Zinta in South Africa don’t you think most guys would be interested in watching the two beauties to which he replied I don’t know about the others but the two would be watching only me.
Also as acknowledged by SRK himself his team may have everything from Dada to controversies,from brands like STAR Plus to sprite what’s lacking is a good middle order batsmen like Ricky Ponting .Akash Chopra seems like a misfit and they seem to have a long tail.They could so very well do with a Jacob Oram or an allrounder who could bat really well and bowl.
Till then lets leave you with all the Kings men and his wit.

Move over EPL,F-1,Rugby for IPL & T2O Cricket is here..

As I am big fan of Geofrey Boycot’s mum ,when the T20 world cup was played in 2007,being the orthodox and an ardent textbook cricket fan who sweared by test-cricket, I really thought what good to make of a 20 over a side match that din’t exploit the true potential of every player in the team.Yes it was exciting,exhilarating ,nerve-crunching but was it going to be restricted to a game of luck and chances.To put it simply I had my reservations. But after the first season of IPL and all the euphoria preceding IPL2 ,I must say I feel if anything T20 & IPL are actually the best testimonials to the game of cricket there has ever been right across the world. Over the years cricket had been type-casted as a sub-continental phenomenon and almost dying in the WestIndies which was once upon a time the breeding ground for the worlds best fast bowlers.But over the last year the excitement generated by IPL & T20 is catching up all across the world and has rubbed some of its magic onto one-day and test cricket.2 Feet long queues about 2 hours before a match in South Africa against the Aussies for a T20 Match was something I could imagine only happening in India.South Africa if anything seems to be in the midst of a cricketing revolution. Packed to capacity,the fun and games,the crazy fan day at all their venues and the number of south African flags on ground in one-dayers,test matches and of-course T20’s has been a common sight over the last year. No doubt their team has been successful in beating the Aussies which is no easy task, in remarkable fashion while touring them.The cricket fever generated by T20 has simply breathed a new lease of life into the cricketing fraternity. No wonder Brian Charles Lara says "Cricket was a dying sport and I believe that Twenty20 is going to be beneficial for many reasons,While every youngster in India who aspires to be Sachin Tendulkar or Kapil Dev,its also about fate and destiny.If they could not reach the heights their icons have scaled T20 has opened new avenues to a lot of cricketers.More and more youngsters world over would be looking at professional T20 in the future as it would also be a glamorous and a well paying job ,something that would put them on par with the footballers and F1 drivers.Or the careers of Sanjay Bangar, Aakash Chopra would have been bitten into dust (as they failed to make it consistently in the Indian colours) had not IPL come along.What it also has done is getting more and more youngsters into the game.For now you would have a young English boy,a new Zealander aspiring to be Kevin Peterson and Freddie Flintoff for 1.44 Million dollars in a season.Women spectators have been a remarkable feature of T20.The excitement, the adrenaline and the euphoria seems to have them enthralled. Talking about why only 8 teams world over could play this game over the last decades with all the nuances of swing bowling, seaming wickets and nitty-gritty’s of being of top quality, we now have a format that is adaptable right across the world. If T20 is promoted across the world the learning curve for adopting to this game would be smaller and more and more teams could develop great teams. We could have USA V China is a T20 Final one day which seems much more feasible due to the marketing prowess and excitement of T20.The same game which is criticized for its non textbook style would actually get the world investing in cricket and who knows we may have more than just 8 good test teams. The Chinese are good learners and the Japanese may instill Just In Time techniques.The amount of money IPL2 is going to generate via television ads,franchise sponsorship would be hysterical considering the world being in a deep recession.It may also be the feel good factor for the IPL Indian fan at the end of the day if the sensex or the NSE tanked in the day.Having a run-time of close to 4 hours which is full of so much excitement and drama ,its actually similar to a soccer match which is close to 2 hours which works very well for the average spectator to finish his work and come spend a delightful evening with his family friends at the venue. Well the organizers would be laughing all the way to the banks but who can blame them.Its a platform where entertainment is delivered Live and candid ,a kind of a reality TV that has no script where the control could switch by every ball and by every over.New stars of this era who specialize in T20 would be born and they would be rich and famous too .I can imagine no cricketing legend the likes of Gary Sobers,Sachin Tendulkar and Don Bradman partying away colouring the world with their larger than large personas (following across the world) like the Beckhams,Hakkinens,Hamiltons and the Ronaldos.But from now on there shall be clubs and there shall be transfers ,we shall have more and more cricketers as the richest sportsmen in the world and they shall be traded from one club to another for a million dollars.With the stock markets crashing,unlike speculation ,here where performance is equity we have the likes of J P Duminy and Mustafe Murtaza getting close to 600 million dollars and more PE players pumping money into the game of cricket.Finally soothsayers may question the basics of cricket and the quality deteriorating but then I rather see that co-existing as could be seen by the two-test series in Australia and South Africa where I feel the T20 euphoria and good cricket is getting more spectators involved with the game of cricket. And as long as that is the case I am happy and I must say the queues for a game of cricket world over will be over 20 feet to get into the stadium 2 hours before the start of a match.Move over Soccer,Football and Rugby.Its T20 Time.