Three Reasons for the KKR debacle

In general I do not follow the antics on the cricket field but since the IPL is good tamasha and KKR is ostensibly based out of Calcutta ( or god forbid, Kolkata !) I have been wondering why they are putting on such a uniformly bad show. The chatterati have come out with two streams of thought to which let me add my own ...

First, SRK after his nationwide success with Chak De India, has come to believe that it is the coach that makes -- or, as in this case, breaks -- the team. In CDI, he portrayed -- albeit on the screen of fantasy -- that the players hardly matter, it is the coach and his strategies that matter in the end and he has applied this philosophy through Buchanan. But he seems to have forgotten completely that the game is actually played on the field -- not in the strategy session -- and it is the players who score runs, take wickets and finally win or lose a game. So now he has a whole team of coaches in addition to a team of players and the tooth-to-tail ratio, both in numbers as well as in the management process, is so small that the team has been rendered toothless !

A corollary to this line of thought is that people do not matter, systems do. That is the way multinational companies operate and that is what is taught to MBA students in the more traditional ( and increasingly obsolescent ) management curriculum. As Gautam Bhattacharya, the incisive and articulate sports correspondent of the Ananda Bazar Patrika, pointed out, this may be the case in more mature societies of Western Europe and North America -- the traditional home of most multinational corporations. But in India, the "system" is so screwed up, distorted and biased, that left to itself it cannot create any value and it is up to the individual who has to beat the system -- by hook or by crook -- to succeed. That is why Hindustan Lever has to learn marketing from Nirma -- and it is to their credit that they learnt it -- and Indians are famous for their jugaad. Circling back to KKR, what this means is that we need the flamboyant eccentricity of sparkling individuals who can hit the ball more than spreadsheet simulations of the Duckworth Lewis variety.

Secondly, SRK is not used to having his personal brand being eclipsed -- even partially -- by another and that is why he cannot tolerate Sourav Ganguly being seen as being central to the KKR story. All said and done, Ganguly has led the national team -- the real team, not a cinematic team -- out of the pits of the betting scandal to the guts-and-glory a victory at Lords and elsewhere ! But it is also true that the Ganguly brand has a limited shelf life and with the passage of time, it will become an increasingly regional brand. So SRK has two reasons -- one personal and the other professional -- why he should not allow Ganguly to succeed and whether he is right or wrong, it is his team, he is the owner, the malik, and since he has paid the piper, he has certainly has the right to call the tune.

While not disagreeing with either of the above, I have a third reason and that is based on astrology ! Though I do not have SRK's horoscope and even if I had it, I do not enough to interpret it adequately, one thing I am sure about is that his stars are well and truly ill-crossed. So called "rationalists" and people with a little knowledge of science may cry foul but the fact remains that there is an undeniable correlation between patterns in the sky and the patterns of events in a human life -- and you may twist and turn and wriggle and squirm but the final result is determined but unfortunately not known, except to the student of patterns.

Napoleon is said to have asked, not for competent generals but for lucky ones ! Having failed with his corporate-managerial approach to running his team he should now decide on the next coach-captain combination in consultation with a good astrologer.