THE much-hyped Kolkata Knight Riders didn’t live up to expectations in last year’s Indian Premier League and ended up winning just six of their 14 games.

Knight Riders coach Australian John Buchanan has chosen to rotate the captaincy, a move that has stirred much controversy.

But with born leaders like Indian Sourav Ganguly, West Indies captain Chris Gayle and Kiwi wicketkeeper Brendan McCullum in the side, there will be no shortage of experience for the coach to call on.

The Kolkata side, owned by Bollywood star Sharukh Khan, also features the likes of Australian batsmen Brad Hodge and David Hussey.

The bowling attack includes Sri Lankan spin wizard Ajantha Mendis and Indian quicks Ishant Sharma and Ajit Agarkar — the latter has 288 ODI scalps to his name.

Ganguly scored 349 runs in 13 innings in the inaugural tournament at an average of 29. His highest score was 91.

Pakistani bowler Umar Gul picked up the most wickets for the side in 2008 — 12 in six games — but will not play in the 2009 edition of the IPL.

South African swing bowler Charl Langeveldt has been mandated to take wickets — an area in which the team fell short last year.

The team is owned by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.
Source – thetimes.co.za

Harbhajan Singh has always wanted to slam the bowlers. He has long nurtured a dream of scoring a breezy Test century, a sensational stroke-filled show in a limited-over match, or best, swing a match with his bat in Twenty20 cricket.

He is a bowler who would “love to be acknowledged as a batsman” worthy of making priceless runs when they matter. Most of his batting aspirations are visible at the ‘nets.’

So, when he promises some explosive stuff at the forthcoming Indian Premier League (IPL) in South Africa, Harbhajan needs to be taken ‘seriously.’

He rightly opined on Wednesday that every player assumes a level of “explosive batting” in Twenty20 but added that “I am no less” even as he promised some exciting fare. His aggregate thus far from four T20 international innings is 30 runs.

That he has no regard for batsmen is well known. The sight of a batsman stirs him into raising his game and Harbhajan, with 330 Test wickets to his credit, said that he would like to play the role of a match-winner with greater “consistency” now.

“I want to win more and more matches and I am all charged up for the IPL,” he said.

He had missed the inaugural edition of the IPL following the slapping incident with S. Sreesanth.

“I don’t like to be reminded of that incident time and again. It is a closed chapter. There is no animosity between us,” said Harbhajan, who signed a deal for licensing his brand name at a function, here on Wednesday.

Licence India would now ‘sell’ Harbhajan as a brand ambassador for setting up restaurants, sportswear and cricket academies.

The 29-year-old off-spinner typically dismissed the multiple-captain theory of John Buchanan.

True, the noted Australian coach’s theory was yet to be implemented, but it had not stopped reactions from all possible quarters.

“I don’t care if they employ 11 captains. I wish them luck,” said Harbhajan, known to mock at anything that emanates from an Australian.

On not being able to receive the Padma Shri award at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday, Harbhajan pleaded, “I had some important family commitments.”
Source – hindu.com

When veteran Australian coach John Buchanan recently floated the idea of having multiple captains in Twenty20, it became a burning issue, literally.

His effigies were burnt in Kolkata by fans of former India captain Sourav Ganguly who believed the concept was meant to dilute the powers of their popular ‘Prince of Kolkata’.

The 56-year-old Buchanan, who had a successful eight-year stint as Australia’s coach, said the new concept would be an advantage in the fast-moving shortest version of the game.

“There will always be a nominated captain, who goes for the toss. He could look after the bowling, make the changes, take care of the strategy aspect,” he told the Kolkata-based Telegraph newspaper.

“We could also have a fielding captain, who sets the field keeping in mind the planning done for that particular match. The fielding captain complements the nominated/bowling captain.

“Both will be supported by the coach, who’ll be the captain off the field. When the team is batting, the coach will be the captain.”

Buchanan, cricket manager of the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, sparked a worldwide debate with his concept and led to the pro-Ganguly protests.

The controversy did not die down and it eventually required Knight Riders owner, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, to broker a truce.

“I am not doing it for the sake of grabbing headlines,” said Buchanan. “I am doing it for reasons that’ll benefit the game.

“Having one captain to run the show in the traditional form is okay. In Twenty20, though, I don’t believe we need a single captain to be responsible for all the decisions.”

Ganguly said they would “wait and see” how the idea works when the IPL opens on Saturday.

“It’s completely new. It has never happened in sports,” he said. “There are no gaurantees.”

Teams like Australia and India have had different Test and one-day captains, but not more than one skipper in a match in any form of the game.

South African coach Mickey Arthur promptly shot down the idea.

“It has to be one leader always,” he said. “I favour the one-captain situation because everybody in the team is clear about who is in charge at all times.

“If you have more than one guy as leader, you don’t know whom to turn to. I really don’t know what he (Buchanan) is aiming at.”

Australian captain Ricky Ponting saw no problems with the concept.

“I know Tassie (Tasmania) actually experimented with that a few years ago. One was doing the field placings and one was doing the bowling changes,” said Ponting.

“So it just sort of lightened the load up on the actual captain and gave him a bit more opportunity to think about different things. I don’t see there’s a lot of problems with it.”

Sri Lanka’s new captain Kumar Sangakkara felt the idea should be given a fair trial.

“If it’s a way to go forward and it shows results, why not?” he asked.

“Hopefully, it’s not a marketing gimmick. Something to create more interest towards that one franchise and to get the public to say ‘Well, we’ll follow the Knight Riders from here on.”
Source – google.com

The involvement of some of Bollywood’s biggest stars in the Indian Premier League (IPL) means the world’s best one-day cricketers are not the only draw when the competition starts this weekend.

Leading figures in India’s Hindi-language film industry are closely involved in the eight teams who will battle it out for Twenty20 supremacy in South Africa from Saturday.

Top actor-producer Shahrukh Khan part-owns Kolkata Knight Riders, actress Preity Zinta has a stake in King’s XI Punjab and fellow star Shilpa Shetty has taken a share in defending champions Rajasthan Royals.

Action hero Akshay Kumar is brand ambassador for Delhi Daredevils, movie hearthrob Hrithik Roshan is flying the flag for the Mumbai Indians, while screen siren Katrina Kaif is supporting the Bangalore Royal Challengers.

Top performers and music directors have also got in on the act, producing music videos for many of the teams that owe much to Bollywood’s song and dance routine tradition.

In their oversized filmstar sunglasses and designer clothes, Shetty, Zinta and Kaif added much-needed glamour to the gathering of corporate suits at the auction for new players in the resort state of Goa earlier this year.

For the actors, many of whom who have been making the rounds at promotional events before the start of IPL’s second season, merging cricket and film makes perfect sense given the fanatical following that both have on the subcontinent.

“Cricket is not a sport in our country, it’s a religion,” said Shetty in February after she and her partner, British Asian businessman Raj Kundra, bought a 16-million-dollar stake in the Rajasthan Royals.

“I am very passionate about cricket and who better to invest in than the current reigning IPL champions. It completes the success story for the IPL team by merging with Bollywood.”

Shahrukh Khan, who stumped up 75 million dollars with his business partners for the Knight Riders franchise, said he got involved to help promote sport as a profitiable career option for young people.

“For me, it will be great to change the lives of youngsters who need to go out and channel their youthful aggression for good purposes rather than putting it to destructive use,” he said.

But with the IPL as much a commercial as a sporting exercise, the glitzy, fast-paced tournament tempts stars and corporate firms alike with the promise of big bucks.

“They (Bollywood stars) have got involved because people today are not just actors. They want to be entrepreneurs. They want to explore all business avenues and not just the film industry,” film critic Taran Adarsh told AFP.

“The fact that they’re coming together for the second time means that the first time was lucrative for them.”

Indian cricket’s governing body made nearly 1.75 billion dollars from the sale of television rights, 108 million dollars from promotion and about 700 million from franchises, according to cricinfo.com.

About 240 million dollars in sponsorship are riding on the event this year alone, India’s Economic Times newspaper said last month.

For Kundra, using Shetty’s “tremendous” following in Britain, Australia and South Africa is another way of making Rajasthan Royals a global sporting brand.

“Bollywood joining cricket is about cricket’s undersold potential,” he said.

Ironically, the only loser could be Indian cinema itself: multiplex owners — already hit by a producers’ strike over box office takings — fear empty theatres through April and May as millions tune in to the IPL instead.
Source – google.com

International Cricket Council lacks ‘common sense’, otherwise it would have created a separate window for the Indian Premier League, said spin legend Shane Warne.

A vociferous advocate of a separate window for the Twenty20 event, Warne said no international matches should have been scheduled for the month of April to allow all players compete in the cash-rich league.

“If the ICC had any common sense, they would create a window for the IPL,” Warne, who led the Rajasthan Royals to a fairytale victory in the inaugural edition of the league was quoted as saying by The Star.
Source – cricketnext.in.com