One too many

Given the T20 format, KKR should avoid having multiple captains.

Normally, Shah Rukh Khan gives the most delightful interviews. He comes across as witty and unaffected, one who can show off in a matter-of-fact manner, though he is not one to recoil from a mean shot. In an interview to the Guardian some time back, he admitted, by way of general conversation, that he dyed his hair. That’s not unnatural for a man his age, but still an unlikely confession from a movie star. When Aamir Khan did the unseemly thing of telling the world that he had named a dog Shah Rukh, Shah Rukh responded by saying that his dog had refused to be named Aamir.

 

So it came as a surprise to hear Khan’s rebuttal to Sunil Gavaskar, who in his syndicated column had criticised John Buchanan. Buchanan, who was the coach of the Australian team when it ratcheted up a record 16 Test wins, is now the coach of Kolkata Knight Riders, the Indian Premier League franchisee owned by Khan. The Australian has come up with this idea of multiple captains. The team this year is likely to have four captains through the tournament.

Gavaskar does not like the idea, and in fact likes few things about Buchanan. Responding to Gavaskar, Khan emphasised that he owned KKR and if Gavaskar wanted to implement something, he should buy his own team.

Khan should have looked at the merits of the case. The multiple-captain theory has a paradox. Twenty20 cricket is so fast it does not allow much room for strategising. The players, even those who are not in play, the coach and the support staff camp just outside the boundary and can easily be heard by those on the field. To have multiple captains surely undermines the position of the captain, which is anyway getting undermined by the format. At the same time, it makes a heavy weather of the position by creating a pool of captains.

Teams that have dominated the game in the past (the West Indies of the 1970s and 80s, Australia of the 1990s and 2000s) have had stable, long-serving captains (Lloyd, Taylor, Waugh), as have those that have rebuilt from scratch (Australia of the 1980s under Border). To destabilise the top management is fraught with the risk of destabilising the organisation, be it a sports team, a company, or a country. (A big threat that looms for all of us is the prospect of an unstable government after the Lok Sabha elections.)

KKR did not do very well in the first IPL season and it is perhaps not the time for it to get caught in unnecessary experiments. Now, Khan may not like to hear that, but one can always tell him to get his own column.