While the IPL has much to write home about in its inaugural edition, superb entertainment for fans, quality 20-20 action, close humdingers, unprecedented advertiser interest also a global network of followers, it has not been bereft of controversies. And now its biggest strength ? the cricket Bollywood partnership, seems to have resulted in what is turning out to be a huge battle of egos. With team owners spending in millions, nothing but a semi-final spot for their team was expected to satisfy them. More so for Shahrukh Khan, whose credibility rests on his winner takes it all image, a factor driven home by the text message he sent his players on the eve of their match against Delhi on the 22nd. The message went thus, ?So, right now, all of us have become part of a failed script… A bad IPL script…. Let?s try and keep our characters worthy of still looking back at this story and remembering it as a special story because we all worked very hard at this…. So, chin up and don?t spoil yr character in the next two games…Let?s go out with a bang and not a whimper…In films, we say u r only as good as yr last film…So let?s make the whole world know how good we r in the last (may be not) two games… Also, do ignore all this bit about Dada, me and John having issues…It?s a normal thing in the world… People like to hit you when u r down…. So, we will be hit… The only way to avoid this is to win… That?s one of the reasons why everybody likes to be a winner…?

What Shahrukh, and other celebrity owners like Dr Vijay Mallya don?t understand, however, is that unlike in Bollywood, where Shahrukh acts to a given script, speaks set dialogues and performs to a predestined ending, in cricket, things are profoundly different. Even the best of players can and will have off days because it is sport, pure, unadulterated drama uncontaminated by elements of certainty. And that has for more than a century, added to cricket?s aura across the globe. However much Shahrukh wants his team to win day after day, things will, more often than not, not unfold in the way predicted. More if the captain, if rumours are to be believed, hasn?t been given the team of his choice.

What the Kolkata Knight Riders have suffered from is not new to Indian cricket. Rather, it is a replication of what happened between Ganguly and Greg Chappell exactly two years earlier. Two strong egos, both icons in their own right refusing to let the other dominate. John Buchanan, who had played second fiddle to Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting in Australia?s world cup winning sides of 1999 and 2003, suddenly looked to take charge of the Knight Riders, presumably against the wishes of captain Saurav Ganguly. Difference between captain and coach was out in the open over the Shoaib Akhtar issue. While the cavalier Ganguly wanted Akhtar to play, the disciplinarian Buchanan refused to oblige. Though Ganguly won round 1 with Akhtar singlehandedly winning the match against the Delhi Daredevils, Buchanan had the last laugh with Akhtar limping off in the following match against the

Chennai Super Kings. Shahrukh Khan, the first person to overshadow Ganguly in popularity charts in Kolkata added fuel to the fire (once again if the grapevine is to be believed) by allowing Buchanan to have the last word. This is interesting because the two men who stood to lose the most if the Kolkata Knight Riders failed to make the semis were Ganguly and Khan. While Ganguly?s iconic image in Kolkata has taken a severe beating, Khan, at best, is a martyr among fans, not an image he aims to cultivate.

If the Knight Riders are to enter season two with some chance to redeem themselves Ganguly and Khan will have to tolerate each others company. Egos will have to be doused, dislikes hidden and fissures mended. Expectedly, professionals as they are, they will soon issue a denial suggesting the rift is a figment of the media?s imagination. While such a denial will temporarily put the lid back on the controversy, it can be conjectured that it is at best a comma and not a full stop. For after all Bollywood versus cricket is a battle that can hardly end in round

Joint General Editor, Sport in the Global Society (Routledge)

Executive Editor, Sport in Society (Routledge)