Buchanan and Ganguly at the news conference in Calcutta. Picture by Gautam Bose

March 25: Sourav Ganguly isn’t liking it. At the moment, though, he’s lumping it.

Less than 24 hours after Kolkata Knight Riders’ principal owner Shah Rukh Khan messaged The Telegraph that he “won’t even comment on such nonsense” that he favoured Sourav’s removal from the helm, cricket manager John Buchanan announced that the IPL team wouldn’t have a “fixed captain”.

It’s inconceivable, however, that such a decision would’ve been taken without Shah Rukh’s consent.

Clearly, the unmistakable impression is that the Knight Riders’ dressing room just isn’t big enough to accommodate three strong-minded individuals — Sourav, Buchanan and Shah Rukh himself.

At best, now, Sourav can hope to be one of the four captains, by rotation. The others in line for the top job are Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum and Brad Hodge.

Buchanan spoke of Laxmi Ratan Shukla too.

Despite being very upset, Sourav maintained he “wasn’t” at this afternoon’s media conference, where Buchanan unveiled his doctrine. But India’s most successful Test captain sounded so unconvincing that the Australian had to interrupt: “I want to say if I was in Sourav’s place, I would be upset.…”

Sourav was ashen-faced throughout and left nobody in doubt about his feelings when he said: “John is the coach of the side and he has his views.… Has the right to make decisions.”

Quite a change. For, in his years at the helm of Team India, Sourav believed there was space only for one boss — the captain.

Parallels have begun to be drawn with the Sourav-Greg Chappell fallout three-and-a-half years ago, but the circumstances and intent then were different.

While that became a personal battle between Sourav and Chappell, Buchanan insists his move has nothing to do with “individuals” and that he’s actually trying to develop leaders.

Yet, many would ask: Shouldn’t the icon player (in this case Sourav) be made to feel like one within the team environment?

Moreover, shouldn’t Sourav have been taken into confidence before Buchanan’s headline-making “we’re still undecided on the leadership issue” remark on Sunday?

Of course, a significant difference from the Chappell episode is that Buchanan has been open about his views and, in that sense, transparent. His modus operandi hasn’t involved emails which get leaked!

Frankly, today, Sourav has nothing to lose except the Rs 4.4 crore that he’s assured of getting each year till 2010. He’s through with international cricket and, surely, doesn’t have to prove anything in a commercially-driven T20 tournament.

“My goal is to perform... Score runs and take wickets,” was Sourav’s rather bland assertion. But, then, unless he decides to say goodbye to Shah Rukh and Co, he can’t be seen as saying anything else from an official platform.

In the evening, though, Sourav was rather feisty and told a TV channel: “Tomorrow, I can jump up and say we need four batting coaches, four John Buchanans… Shah Rukh can say we need six (bowling coach) Andy Bichels… These are all opinions…”

Buchanan, who got phenomenal results as Australia’s coach from late 1999 till early 2007, has been known to look beyond the immediate and what he’s attempting could catch on.

Equally, there’s a good chance there could be enough confusion to stump everybody, Buchanan included.

Buchanan, for his part, explained: “Cricket is going through a transition… This is T20 and we will see some real changes in the future… The game is moving from the longer to the shorter version fast and, hence, it demands different ways of thinking.”

The feeling is that in terms of management, Buchanan wants to place himself on a par with somebody like Sir Alex Ferguson.

As a cricketing idea, rotating the captaincy is far more radical than, for example, what the late Bob Woolmer tried in the 1999 World Cup: one-way radio contact with his captain, Hansie Cronje (who is also no more), and Allan Donald on the field.

Lucky for the Knight Riders that this year’s IPL is being held overseas, otherwise, with Sourav losing his position of pre-eminence, gate receipts at the Eden could have taken a hit.