Monday 28 May 2012

Kolkata and KKR


Phew!! The hectic month of IPL is over , finally!!

For the last one month the country had been divided on regional lines depending upon the allegiance to the region based cricket teams. Yesterday night all of Kolkata( at least the most of it) erupted in unadulterated glee after Kolkata Night Riders managed to stage a wonderful win to lay their hands on a lovely cup and about 10 crores INR among all other things. The glee of its famous owner at having won the cup for the first time hogged the television screens and the daily newspapers of today. After all, the much beleaguered backbencher city had some achievement to show!!!

The present local government was overjoyed and promptly the airwaves were ruled by the right comments. Suddenly, local sweets like rossogolla and mishti doi was the toast of everyone and every heart started beating for the city.

But , it was a tough day for me!! Having  been identified as someone whose sympathies were not with the 'local team' but with an individual who did not play for the team, all hell broke loose the moment the winning runs were hit by Manoj Tiwari. In a span of about 5 minutes I was called some beautiful names like parochial, loser, worthless, and some other ones which I would not repeat here as I guess that would lower the dignity of this blog.

However, I was happy that KKR won-- for two reasons. Reason one was that CSK was trying to armtwist the tournament as a personal backyard tournament and reason two was that my Kolkata had some thing to cheer about.

But, the cynic in me has a few more questions to which I seek answers:-

a) How is KKR representing Kolkata? After all, this a profit seeking commercial venture which operates out of Mumbai and do not , I repeat, do not, till date have an office or representation in Kolkata.

b) What happens if tomorrow, the name is changed to just knight riders and it operates out of Bhubaneswar or Dhaka? After all, the owner is free to do it!!

c) Heard that the state government would have a grand reception for the winners! Great idea this! but what about the Bengal cricket team which had won the Vijay Hazare trophy for the first time this year. I know that most of us do not know about this. Just for the information, this tournament is the premier tournament for one dayers in India. This year the champions team list had the following names:- Manoj Tiwary, Laxmi ratan Shukla, Debabrata Das, Anustup Mazumdar, Wriddhiman Saha, Sreevats Goswami, Ashok Dinda, Iresh Saxena, Shami Ahmed, Sourav Ganguly among others. Any plans for felicitating these pioneers? Or will it be the only those guys belonging to the Mumbai based franchise?

I know these questions are uncomfortable but these are to be asked. After all, it is the name of my beloved city that is at stake.

P.S.:- Mr. SRK, if you really mean what you said after the match, one would expect you to invest a sizeable amount of your huge earnings at the expense of the loyal Kolkatans in making the game grow and in nurturing talent from this state. But I guess, that is expecting too much. After all, you are here for business and you would like to encash on ready talent. Nurturing young talent is someone else's forte and I guess you know his name rather well!!! 
And a friendly caution at the end :- this city is infamous for being ruthless against its own icons at the first hint of failure or mis-step . You can ask Sunil Gavaskar, Bhaichung Bhutia, Jose Ramirez Baretto, Sourav Ganguly , old players of East bengal and Mohun Bagan for reference.
God Bless You for the moments!!!