“We believed in the team and the players backed each other.” This cryptic sentence from Kolkata Knight Riders’ skipper Gautam Gambhir summed up the tone and tenor of the team’s approach to the seventh edition of Indian Premier League.
Shah Rukh Khan would have danced into any record books if there was a count for the number of summersault an owner did following his team’s victory in any tournament in any game across the globe. It had taken five seasons to break the ice. Now the Knights were at the top of the food chain yet again. Indeed it was a mission for the purple people of the moneyed league. Whispers of flash in the pan from the doubting Toms had to be stopped and KKR hushed them up in the spin web of the troika of Sunil-Shakib-Piyush and the audacity of the timber from Robin-Manish-Yusuf. The undisputed monarch of Bollywood can now sing ‘Korbo Lorbo Jitbo Re’ from every roof top in Mumbai and Kolkata can get ready for SRK mania.
Khan changed three captains, three coaches, the entire team, his CEO and even the logo, colour and design of their jersey. There was nothing left to do except keeping faith that his new band of boys would deliver. This edition SRK and think tank did things differently. They off loaded the stars and brought in utility players. They gave up the regional sentiment of keeping the Tewaris and Shuklas and brought in the Pandeys and Uthappas. Even Mohammed Shami was overlooked for Umesh Yadav. What were they thinking experts yelled. The analysts threw in the towel, decidedly the battle was over even before it had begun.
But contrary to the popular belief KKR began with a spunky win against the defending champions and repeated the feat against the mighty Royal Challengers. The desert odyssey was looking like a fairytale. But just then the quicksand struck. KKR began losing. They lost matches which one could not lose even in their wildest nightmares. Gautam Gambhir looked seriously out of form and the poor choice during the auction was showing. It actually felt sad thinking that SRK continued to wave, salute, sing and dance and keep a smile on, do extraordinary things on the screen, while his team slumped to the mundane mediocrity again, fumbling, faltering and often looking like mere amateurs in the Middle East.
But to everyone’s surprise as the first leg ended and KKR returned to India, things started to turn around. Two simple measures and the fortunes changed. Jacques Kallis was dropped and Robin Uthappa was promoted to open with Gambhir; Manish Pandey came first down. Suddenly the world looked a better place for KKR. The alarmists who had predicted the impending doomsday and the critics who had sung the swan song for the team now watched in amazement as they won four matches in a row to head for the Garden of Eden.
A slow smouldering revolution was underway within the KKR. “Everyone in the dressing room who wears a KKR jersey has to make themselves count. Or else they do not deserve to be in the dressing room. I never felt we needed to buy stars. We believed in making stars out of this team and now you have at least three to look at,” Gambhir said in a pre-final interview.
The message had reached to the players and support staff. The young skipper meant business and it showed as KKR slowly got into the groove.
Towards the business end of the IPL, even when Kings XI Punjab were the firm favourites, the purple brigade stifled the red resurgence in Eden Gardens and reached the final winning 8 games in a row. By now myths were broken, stereotypes erased and Kolkata was won over burying for good the ghost of parochial patriotism.
So when the final got underway Kings XI may have had the fire in their belly to climb the summit this time, but the advantage of self-belief was with KKR. They had a mission to fulfill and the purple brigade was not ready to go out with exit wounds. The rest as they say is history!
