Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Knight Riders on the Storm

DUBAI - Kolkata Knight Riders, a team owned by Shahrukh Khan's Red Chillies Entertainment, may have failed to entertain its followers at the hallowed Eden Gardens in 2008, but this year they have managed to become a box office hit even before a ball is bowled!

Apparently unhappy with the now retired Sourav Ganguly's fitness, coach John Bunchanan came up with his four-captain policy. Never the one to pick lesser mortals for a bout in the ring, Sourav refused to hide his thoughts. That he wasn't happy with the former Australian coach's desire to experiment. India's most successful captain ever found support from legendary players like Sunil Gavaskar and Glenn McGrath. In fact things became so ugly that the team's owner Shahrukh had to issue a statement, saying that he could never imagine a Kolkata team without its Dada!

The Riders had an average first season as they finished just ahead of Royal Challengers and Deccan Chargers in the eight-team event.

Financially though they were the most successful IPL team last year with a profit of more than three million dollars.

team

υ Bastmen: Brad Hodge, Akash Chopra, Debabrata Das, Cheteshwar Pujara.

υ Wicketkeepers: Brendon McCullum, Morne Van Wyk, Wriddhiman Saha.

υ All-rounders: David Hussey, Moises Henriques, Chris Gayle, Mashrafe Mortaza, Angelo Mathews, Sourav Ganguly (captain), Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Iqbal Abdullah, Sachin Rana, Ajit Agarkar, Sanjay Bangar.

υ Bowlers:Mashrafe bin Mortaza, Ajantha Mendis, Ashok Dinda, Murali Kartik, Ishant Sharma, Mohnish Parmer, Charl Langeveldt, Murali Kartik.

υ Head coach: J Buchanan.

Assistant coaches: Matthew Mott.

υ New Players: Mashrafe Mortaza, Mohnish Parmer.  υ Player Lost: Shoaib Akhtar, Umer Gul and Salman Butt (Pakistani players are not taking part in this year's IPL).  υ Player resigned: Ajantha Mendis has been given a permanent contract due to his fine shows for Sri Lanka.  υ Transfer Market: Sanjay Bangar taken from Deccan Chargers.


Source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/sports/2009/April/sports_April424.xml&section=sports&col=

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