What is common between Chak De Girls and KKR Boys?

No prizes for guessing! SRK, who played the role of coach of India women’s Hockey team in the Bollywood movie Chak De India, is the franchisee owner of Kolkatta Knight Riders team in IPL Cricket league. While Chak De.. became a superhit film a couple of years ago, KKR, SRK's sports cum business venture is fast heading towards failure.

The chak De team had at least three players with strong egos. Two brilliant forwards trying to hog the limelight and therefore at loggerheads with each other, and a senior pro deeply hurt because of being sidelined by the coach. SRK repeated the act with KKR by preferring MuCCullum to Dada for the captaincy. (Incidentally, in the film, the goalkeeper was made the captain whereas for IPL SRK has chosen wicketkeeper as the captain!) The Knight riders are a bunch of extremely talented international and local players. But the lack of common purpose is quite evident.

Shah Rukh Khan won lot of accolades for his portrayal of Kabir Khan, the Chak De coach. Why has SRK bought IPL franchise? Has the Kabir Khan role inspired him? Does he treat it as a pure business proposition or is it his passion for the game? I think he is pretending to be passionate in order to further his business interests. Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya have made it clear in no uncertain terms that they are into IPL purely for the sake of business. What irritates most people is SRK’s pretension of being a great thinker of the game and thereby ridiculing some of Cricketing icons of India.

The film depicts how a former player becomes coach to erase personal ignominy of having been held responsible for team’s loss. His maverick ways don’t go down well with most of the members of the team and a rebellion irrupts. The coach is on the verge of resigning but a dramatic non-sporting incident unites the team together. The KKR team is similarly placed. Atrocious decisions of the owner and coach (Buchanan) have divided the team vertically. The captain has offered to resign. The owner is contemplating selling away the franchise. To add to the woes, a mysterious blogger, the fake IPL player, claiming to be a part of KKR squad, is washing the dirty linen in full public view. Unless something dramatic (as dramatic as attack on Chak De girls in the Hotel) happens Riders are sure to be thrown off their Knights.