Buchanan and Kolkata Knight Riders suck big time?

Posted by on Apr 28, 2009 in Cricket, Indian Celebrities

Well after all the pre-tournament hype surrounding the Black and Gold team, the results that we are seeing right now are a total disappointment. The Kolkata Knight Riders team owned by Bollywood Baadshah Shahrukh Khan is sucking big time in this second edition of the Indian Premier League. All the super strategies of the hyped Australian Coach John Buchanan and his brigade have gone for a toss. For a team to win a Cricket Match, the most important factor is to do the Basics Right! It doesn’t matter if the team is Australia, India or Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, all that matters is sticking to your basics individually and as a collective unit right in the middle as it comes.

And talking about the basics, the Kolkata Knight Riders have picked up some strange players for a Twenty20 tournament. How on earth did they imagine a defensive player like Aakash Chopra can deliver the goods in a fast-paced version of the game? Then they have Sanjay Bangar, an honest all-rounder but with limited talent. Bangar has mostly played some of the most boring knocks in his career, although he can hit the ball big when he wants to as shown in a tight chase against West Indies a few years back. The probability of that happening is 1 in every 30 innings perhaps?

The Knight Riders depend only on three blokes to deliver the goods all the time – Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum and Sourav Ganguly. The rest of the batsmen just seem to be filling up the numbers. Gayle and McCullum can be heroes on one day and plain zeroes on the other while Sourav is more of an emotional guy, who thinks he can, but simply doesn’t possess what it takes to face red hot pace and bounce. So to rely on Sourav to win matches is just too much to ask out of a veteran who has left the game at the top level.

The Knight Riders have a foreign star in Brad Hodge who has struggled to keep a place in the Aussie team of late. Hodge hasn’t looked good at all this season to provide any inspiration for his team. The KKR team management would hope David Hussey to return back to the fold quickly and provide the stability and at the same time some firepower in the batting. David Hussey can also bowl some good off breaks. All in all Kolkata Knight Riders is looking very very weak on the paper for me!

The bowling department looks a bit better with the ever reliable Ishant Sharma, and then you have Ajantha Mendis who should torment the non-international players of any team with ease. I hope Ishant gets proper rest as well and is not made to play all the 14 matches for the good of Indian Cricket. Well for me, Murali Kartik has to be played in every match in my honest opinion as the wickets in South Africa this time have been very dry. I am sure Murali Kartik with all his experience of Indian and English domestic circuit can do what a Pragyan Ojha has been doing for the Deccan Chargers.

Well whatever combinations that the Knight Riders try to bring in, they just look a weak team to begin with! Their resources just look very bleak. Their problems will grow further when Chris Gayle leaves them for the England Tour. May be there is something more than winning matches for teams in the IPL. Perhaps it’s about building huge fan bases, selling merchandises and of course bagging big sponsors. In that sense, KKR might be doing pretty well, but then they are not really making their fans happy.

Some of the strange things have come out from the Knight Riders Camp. Prior to the tournament was the huge hype about selecting the squad. And what have they come up with? Absolutely nothing! Atleast a Shane Warne has brought up a Kamran Khan who can be nurtured into a useful cricketer for India in the near future. Here I have a serious complaint about KKR, why the heck are they wasting India’s future star – Cheteshwar Pujara? Whether this guy performs or not he should be in the line-up and given maximum exposure as it will be really worthy in shaping up this certain batsman of the Indian team for the next few years. Seriously folks, Pujara is a great talent who should not be wasting his time sitting on the bench doing nothing!

Coming back to Buchanan, he was the one bringing up the stupid idea of having four captains in the squad! I think a Coach is as good as the team he has got. It is always easy to be the Coach of a team that has bowlers like Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne but never the same when the team is filled up with players of limited skills. The team owner Shahrukh Khan sounds as if he has played 100 Tests and 200 ODIs atleast by his big talk of supporting the 4-Captain theory. Shahrukh was talking about some clever signaling between the players on the park like it happens in baseball. Well all I can say is a Cricket Match is no Commando operation, it’s all about batting, bowling and fielding well according to what the situation demands.

I guess the FakeIPL Player is the only one who is having all the fun and not the Kolkata Knight Riders management as far as this tournament goes.

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