Kolkata Knight Riders’ Shoaib Akhtar and Sourav Ganguly with owner Shah Rukh Khan at a Calcutta hotel on Sunday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

Calcutta: Shah Rukh Khan has reconfirmed his association with the Kolkata Knight Riders. As a first step, he would set up an office in the city soon.

At a function in the afternoon to mark the end of their campaign, Shah Rukh Khan thanked everyone and presented the players and support staff with gold plated helmets.

Shah Rukh brushed aside all controversies of discontent within the team, saying, “when somebody is down or losing doesn’t necessarily mean there are problems within the team. I’ve been working for 21 years. I’ve seen amazing highs and awful lows… But one thing is that I’ve always stood by the ideology. I’ve always stuck to my passion and belief,” he said.

“These are all baseless reports published in a section of the media. There is no bad blood in the team. I’m very hurt by these allegations. We are all good friends. Sourav is an important player of my team… So are the others,” he said.

Formally attired, and not in his trademark Knight Riders jersey, Shah Rukh spent some time at the Eden, during which he handed over the team jersey to debutant Ajanta Mendis. He left before the start and took a late evening flight out of the city.

“Not all of my films have done well. I have done close to 60 and more than half of them haven’t done well. The reason I’ve achieved success is because I know failures well… I’m attached to failure… Life itself is a failure because you die at the end of it. I don’t lose to failure. When I started making films and producing them people said I would be a failure. Thankfully, most of the things I’ve embarked upon haven’t failed…”

Shah Rukh also said that they would be wiser by the experience. “There have been lot of slip ups. We’ve learnt from mistakes. We also keep growing just like our little fans… The first step towards having a better management would be to set up an office for Knight Riders in Calcutta. “We would then have the local flavour going… I would be visiting and looking up things here. That would ensure we remain part of the family and culture assuming that we keep our association going for another 30-40 years.”

While not willing to divulge plans for next season, he made it clear that he was already working on it. “It would be strange to discuss my plans for next season. The target obviously would be to play better and win the trophy. There are lots of plans… The people have shown tremendous faith in us and we’ve got to carry it forward with gusto.

“Cricket-wise the best judge would be John (Buchanan) and Sourav (Ganguly). My job is to support the team. We would be looking at new recruits in the new season… We will also have to look at our agenda. We’ll also our get our regulars like (Ricky) Ponting and (Brendon) McCullum back. We will meet shortly and decide on the course of action,” he said.

“There was not much choice with team selection. The bidding process was such that the cap was on $5 million. Everybody didn’t get the team of his choice but that’s the way it is… There are lot of rules and issues that need to be sorted out. It was more of a mathematical selection.”