KKR were hit by absenteeism too

No one can accuse the Kolkata Knight Riders management of only being fanciful. Over the past few days, team owner Shah Rukh Khan has shown an admirable sense of humour even after the cause was lost, and John Buchanan has shown remarkable candour in expressing a fresh idea that would seem like it is negating his original, controversial one.

While the long sms to his team members after the Knight Riders had lost to Delhi earlier this week was replete with exhortations to do better, Shah Rukh ends the missive with a pointed post-script: “and stop dropping catches,” he writes, “that will help.” This reflects the ability to laugh at oneself (after all, he owns the team), but is also tinged with some regret at what might have been given a little luck and greater discipline.

The greatest quality about sport is that it teaches you how to cope with defeat, which is impossible without a sense of humour, and builds up fortitude for future endeavour. Irony, of course, is part of the human condition. If everything went clockwork, where remains the charm of life?

I have not been a subscriber to the multiple captains theory (that was ultimately scuttled) which several analysts argue started the turmoil in the Knight Riders camp. But it must be accepted that the team’s travails are not only due to that controversy alone. True, the players would have been uneasy with so much going on around them over which they had little control, but the team had also been hit the most with absenteeism, and has also lacked any luck.

Ricky Ponting, David Hussey and Shoaib Akhtar are the three players missing this season, and while there can be some compunctions about the last-named, this is as splendid a trio of players as in any team in the IPL. To overcome their absence, the KKR needed extraordinary motivation, and some luck.

Unfortunately, they had neither.

If the performances of all the teams in the first half of the tournament had to be benchmarked, KKR are obviously the worst — but not by that much. Some other sides like Mumbai, Bangalore and Punjab have swung violently from one side to the other, but they are still in contention for a place in the semis. Though by the end of the tournament, some could finish lower than KKR. That’s how the cookie crumbles — in sport as in life.

Perhaps even more interesting — given the background — was Buchanan’s statement that Shane Warne or Adam Gilchrist should captain Australia in the Twenty20 World Championships. The two players are long retired, and it is too late in any case to make changes now, but his argument in this instance also scuttles his own theory about multiple captains being more efficient in Twenty20. And supporting Warne, so long his critic!

Buchanan also argues, and I think quite correctly again, that key players of any team should be kept fit and available for Test matches, which means that retired players who are still fit could be considered for T20. For Buchanan (I presume), T20 is good, rewarding sportstainment, but Test matches are the ‘real thing’, which old-timer cricket lovers and some current players and administrators would readily agree too.

Already, there is a brouhaha about the delay in Chris Gayle joining the West Indies team in England. The defeat in the first Test will undoubtedly accentuate the criticism against the West Indies skipper to extend his stay in the IPL because he had no time to acclimatise. But then, this argument collapses against Ravi Bopara’s splendid hundred, and Fidel Edwards’ superb bowling in the first innings.

I reckon unless this contradiction is bridged early, there will be a tug-of-war between players and administrators over it in the near future.