Shah Rukh Khan is the owner of KKR (Kolkata Knight Riders) at the IPL (Indian Premiere League). He is known to always be there on the ground for most matches and cheer for the team. When the IPL had kick-started initially, Sourav Ganguly was the captain of the team but as KKR was the only team which did not get selected to the playoffs, the owners were disappointed.
The team is co-owed by Shah Ruk along with Jai Mehta (Juhi Chawla and her husband). Thus, they decided to bring in CEO Venky Mysore to restructure the whole team. The entire team changed, including the captain of the team Sourav. In a documentary made on the team, ‘Living with KKR’, Shah Rukh had spoken about this entire incident. He had said, “All these thoughts started coming in that maybe the format is not suiting the great players.”
SRK had also called it a divorce of sort. He said, “If it’s not going to be Sourav leading KKR, then we will rehash the whole team. We were the only people who put the whole team back into the IPL pool. That was the only way we could show respect to the greatness and the beginnings that Sourav Ganguly gave us in KKR.”
He added, “Sometimes it’s better to just sit down and say you know what, this is not working out. Not because you are not good, not because I am not good, it’s like a divorce. Sometimes you say sweetheart, I hope you are happy and have a happier life and so will I, let’s just move on. How right it is for Sourav to have paid the price for the wrong that the whole system in KKR was, I don’t know.”
Meanwhile cricket commentator Gautam Bhattacharya also recalled this rough time between SRK and Sourav as he said, “Shah Rukh and Sourav were similar characters – stormy, taking on the system, winning it on their own, very proud, self-made individuals. In the process, communication between them had come down to quite an extent and towards the end of the tournament, Ganguly and Shah Rukh were no longer friends, let me put it this way.”
This year’s IPL is set to kick-start on Saturday, March 22.
