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| The Knights’ captain Gautam Gambhir at Calcutta airport on Monday night. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha |
Calcutta, May 28: Shah Rukh Khan and his Gautam Gambhir-led Kolkata Knight Riders landed in town separately tonight, the team owner with a prompted victory chant of “Korechhi, Lorechhi, Jeetechhi Re!”
“We are extremely happy that we were able to do something that we wanted to do for this city, our city. And from today, Kolkata Knight Riders belongs to Bengal,” Shah Rukh said from a blue-and-white dais outside VIP Gate No. 5 of the international terminal shortly after landing by an Air India flight at 11.35pm.
Sources said the superstar hadn’t planned to make an appearance on the dais, but changed his mind after minister Firhad Hakim told him in the lounge that a crowd was waiting for him there.
Shah Rukh, accompanied by KKR co-owner Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta, repeated his victory cry at the ITC Sonar Calcutta after reaching there shortly after midnight. Juhi said she was eagerly awaiting the felicitation and roadshow organised by the Mamata Banerjee government tomorrow, after which she plans to pay a visit to Kalighat.
“There were so many moments in the match last night when I pictured myself at the deity’s feet,” said Juhi.
The players and the extended Knight Riders contingent had arrived an hour earlier to a reception that prompted Gautam Gambhir to declare with a little prompting from teammate Laxmi Ratan Shukla that the Delhi boy in him had metamorphosed into a “Kolkata-r chhele”.
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| Shah Rukh arrives in a city hotel with co-owner Juhi Chawla and Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of MP Shashi Tharoor. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray |
“Thank you very much for your support,” Gambhir shouted into the mike, prodded by minister-cum-cheerleader Aroop Biswas into making the impromptu speech in front of a 2,000-plus gathering of politicians, officials and flag-waving fans at the airport.
As many as 54 passengers on the Chennai-Calcutta IndiGo flight that landed at 10.05pm were from the KKR contingent, including the families of some of the players and the support staff. The foreign players in the team didn’t take that flight.
Venky Mysore, the CEO of the Knight Riders, and coach Trevor Bayliss were among those on the crowded makeshift dais just outside the VIP Gate No. 5.
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| The Knights’ Iqbal Abdulla arrives in Calcutta on Monday night. Picture by Sanat Kumar Sinha |
“I just want to say that we are very, very proud of the team. They have done a fantastic job under the captaincy of Gautam Gambhir. I want to thank you all for your support. I also want to thank our head coach Trevor Bayliss and Vijay Dahiya… he is hiding there, our assistant coach,” Mysore said.
The entire KKR contingent had been segregated from the rest of the passengers and escorted into two coaches soon after the plane came to a halt at parking bay No. 22. They were driven straight to near the ceremonial lounge attached to the international terminal, where a bevy of Trinamul ministers, party leaders and officials of the Cricket Association of Bengal were waiting with bouquets and garlands.
The Trinamul line-up included Subrata Bakshi, Subrata Mukherjee and Firhad Hakim.
When Hakim, the urban development minister, spotted player-of-the-final Manvinder Bisla trying to sneak away from the dais unnoticed, he held him by the hand and pulled him to the front to cheers from the crowd. A wave of the hand later, the shy Haryana player had slipped back to the rear of the stage.
Youth welfare minister Biswas then took upon himself the task of dragging local boys Laxmi and Manoj Tiwary out of the dais and past the barricade. Caught in the middle of fawning fans, the duo threw their garlands at them before being pulled out of the huddle and escorted into the team bus.
For many of the KKR fans at the airport, it had been a long wait for a glimpse of their IPL heroes. “I had heard that the Knights would arrive at 7pm, so I reached the airport by 6pm. They didn’t arrive until well past 10, but I am happy I got to see my heroes,” said Gourabh Sarkar, a second-year student of Dum Dum College.
Barun Gogoi and Purabi Datta from Assam, both working with a Sector V BPO, said they had become “die-hard KKR fans” since shifting base to the city. “We love cricket, and staying in Calcutta we have become KKR fans. The final was so exciting that we couldn’t resist coming to the airport to cheer for our champions,” Barun said.
Minister Biswas, who has been on official “IPL duty” since Saturday evening, exhorted the fans to scream their lungs out when the team arrived. “Till yesterday, we had shouted slogans to encourage this team to win their matches. Today, we will shout to express our gratitude to KKR for winning the cup for Calcutta,” he exhorted the crowd, which roared in approval.
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