The favourite whipping boy of Indian cricket (no matter that he’ll soon be 38), Sourav Ganguly, did some whipping himself, on Thursday night.
As for the targets, they were both seen and unseen.
In the second category being those who made Dada into a ‘Dadubhai’, earlier in the day, and asked him to retire in the best interests of the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR).
[Sourav, by the way, responded calmly — off the field, that is. “I still don’t know the details... Once in a while, this can happen.”]
The visible targets were the Deccan Chargers bowlers, particularly Pragyan Ojha, hit for three sixes in one over.
MoM Sourav appeared to make a point, even if he didn’t set out to, that the national selectors did nothing wrong by not picking the left-arm spinner for the upcoming World T20.
Knight No.1 scored 88 off 54 balls (9x4, 5x6) his second-highest in the IPL’s three-year history, and got out (146 for four, 17th over) while trying to push the scoring rate even more instead of eyeing a personal landmark.
It was an innings which made principal owner Shah Rukh Khan say “Dada’s looking good...” A change from his recent tweets.
Sourav’s masterly innings allowed his bowlers to go about their job without too much pressure and they responded superbly. Shane Bond was outstanding, as were Murali Kartik (wonder why Krishnamachari Srikkanth and Co. don’t find him worthy of a recall) and Angelo Mathews.
Asked if dear friend Sachin Tendulkar’s amazing run (314 runs at an average of 52-plus) in IPL III had been an inspiration, Sourav smiled and told The Telegraph: “It’s not about T20... Sachin’s an inspiration in all forms of the game...”
Unusually, Sourav thumped his chest more than once on reaching his second half-century of the season. However, speaking exclusively, he insisted he hadn’t been sending a message.
“No... There was nothing to it... I was happy... Thumping the chest is one way of conveying happiness,” Sourav pointed out.
Little happiness was, of course, shared between Sourav and Andrew Symonds, who is known to sledge hard.
Indeed, at the media conference, Sourav made it clear that Symonds hadn’t congratulated him after the match. For obvious reasons, he didn’t get into their on-field exchanges.
What matters is that the two points went into KKR’s “ledger,” as an Adam Gilchrist would put it.
If there were murmurs that his “excuses-are-over” tweet was directed at Sourav, Shah Rukh cleared the air. “It was for the team… professionals don’t give excuses.”
The words King Khan carefully chose to describe his captain? “Dada is looking good… I am very, very fond of him.”
Not just Dada, the 32K star-gazer gallery also had a different look about it. Two white staircases have been added on the two sides for emergency use, in line with directives from the fire services department. The flight of stairs beside the Club House was put to good use when Shah Rukh and his two children, Aryan and Suhana, went up and down in the second innings.
“The kids will be thrilled” if the KKR won, SRK had told his Twitter followers, and so they were, accompanying their father to the team dugout sporting wide smiles.
Shah Rukh had flown to Calcutta today from Goa on a private jet with his posse that also included wife Gauri, Hrithik Roshan’s wife Sussanne and Arjun Rampal and wife Mehr.
A party to celebrate the wrap-up of the first schedule of his new home production Ra.1 had kept SRK busy till the early hours of Thursday.
And a party to celebrate the Eden win was to keep him busy till well into Friday.
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