Kolkata Knight Riders Will Have 1 Captain and Multiple Strategists

The Kolkata Knight Riders management on Tuesday clarified that the idea of having multiple captains was to have a set of strategists who would form a team of four to five core experts in the field of fielding, bowling, batting and other areas of the game to assist the captain on field with their viewpoints before executing the strategy.

“Needless to stay the term ‘multi captains’ has raised a few eyebrows and questions”, the statement issued post the joint meeting in Mumbai said. “The captain of the team is one and only one as in the case in most sports. Just the roles which are there in the regular format of the game as the fielding expert, batting coaches, are being better defined to be able to give quick suggestions as in the case of baseball and some other faster-paced sports, said the statement.

“All internal decisions are taken collectively by the core cricketing teams which comprises of John Buchanan, Sourav Ganguly, Matthew Mott and a few others. There is no dissent on that ever. Even this confusion is caused because these roles got described as multiple captains, the statement added.However, there still may be a twist in the tale as the Knight Riders did not specify whether it will be Ganguly who will be leading Kolkata in the second edition of the IPL, saying a decision on the issue will be taken in South Africa where the Twenty20 tournament begins on April 18.

Kolkata Knight Riders did their bit on Tuesday to clear the air regarding the whole “who will be the captain” controversy after Ganguly, Buchanan and owner Shah Rukh Khan met in Mumbai for an emergency meeting.

“As the team is not decided because of all overseas venue changes, etc, we will take the call on the issue of captain, vice-captain, the team, post the sessions in South Africa, prior to the first game.”Reason for doing so is not to shirk the issue of who is the captain but to announce all that together to make that a cohesive decision from the team management to avoid confusion like it has resulted right now,” said the official statement by the Knight Riders. According to sources, Ganguly was “not very happy” with the decision as there still remained a suspense over “who would be the captain”.

But CNN-IBN had learnt that Ganguly will be entrusted with the job for the first few games in South Africa and New Zealand wicket-keeper-batsman Brendon McCullum will be his deputy.The Knight Riders have conceded that the move to have multiple captains has raised a few eyebrows and that while the captain of the team will be one, a core set of four to five experts will be in-charge of the team strategies.

“Needless to say the term ‘multi-captains’ has raised a few eyebrows and questions. The idea is to have a set of strategists as is always the case classically in cricket, who will form a team of 4 or 5 core experts in the field of fielding, bowling, batting, data etc,” the statement added.

“So please can we now lay to rest all theories on how John and Dada relate to each other and let us get on with the more important aspect of getting together the best team to play in the tournament,” the statement said.

Ganguly though did not say anything after the marathon meeting that lasted for about four hours.