Sourav Ganguly
Having been placed at the sixth seventh and eighth positions in the last three IPL’s the KKR team would have been hoping to rope in as many good players as possible in the auctions held on the eighth and ninth of this month and to some relief of the owners they have managed to hire a few key players. The KKR team which had retained none of its players managed to hire Gautam Gambhir’s services for the forthcoming two editions of the IPL at a record price of USD 2.4 million. With some key middle order players like Kallis, Yusuf Pathan and Manoj Tiwary with a bowling attack of Australian pacer Brett Lee and the young Indian bowler Jaidev Unadkat who made his International debut against South Africa the KKR owners seem to have done their homework well.
However with a cap on the number of foreign players allowed to be included in the playing eleven limited to four it would have rather been a formidable team if the owners had been able to pull in an Indian batsman to support the middle order.
One might argue that the presence of Sourav Ganguly in the middle order would have sufficed the purpose said above, however with the Knight Riders left with only USD 425,000 during the re-auction it was only practical for the Venky Mysore (who happens to be the CEO of KKR) enterprise to opt for some other player rather than exhausting USD 400,000 on Sourav.
The fate of Sourav Ganguly in the 4th edition of IPL still remains indecisive. Although the closing of the auction should have been curtains for Sourav yet Shahrukh Khan has reportedly said that he would speak to Sourav and try to bring him into the playing eleven as there can be no Kolkata Knight Riders without the arguably most successful captain of India.
Ganguly who was the second highest scorer in the last edition of IPL had expressed publicly that he was ready to ply for any team if given an opportunity. After being snubbed on the first day there was some expectation that the Sahara Pune Warriors as well as the Kings XI Punjab would have been keen to opt for Sourav in the re-auction as these were the only two teams which were left with over USD 2 million.
However now with Sourav not in any of the teams and with SRK playing the damage control by trying to pull in Sourav as player or a mentor one only hopes that KKR improves its performance compared to the previous years and gives the Eden Gardens fans some reason to cheer!
Tags: Cricket, Eden Gardens, Indian Premier League, IPL, IPL 2011, IPL 4, KKR, Kolkata Knight Riders, Sourav Ganguly, SRK
