POST-REINVENTION

The two T20 men who matter are padding up for an end-January partnership in town.

“I want Kolkata Knight Riders to win the next edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). We have already been discussing various issues and I will sit with Shah Rukh (Khan) soon to finalise matters,” skipper Sourav Ganguly said.

For that, the skipper will have to wait for the team owner to take a break from films. Hours before Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi hit the halls on Friday, Shah Rukh Khan told Metro: “I was supposed to come to Calcutta in between but that didn’t happen. I am now leaving for America (to star in Karan Johar’s film) for 40 days. I should be coming to Calcutta in end-January.”

Sourav may be putting his feet up on his Behala balcony after hanging up his Team India boots, and Shah Rukh may have his hands full with My Name is Khan, but when it comes to cricket they are on the same pitch.

POST-RETIREMENT

“The idea is to try and provide better entertainment and better cricket this time,” said the 12th man of the Knight Riders.

For the team’s opener and leader, the early exit in the inaugural version of the Indian Premier League (IPL) still rankles.

“We will start practising for the IPL as soon as possible and sort things out,” he said, eyes wide and jawline clenched in trademark Sourav-with-a-mission style.

KKR boss SRK elaborated on Mission 2009. “Everything will be set up by January. We start a bit earlier this time, so we are better organised in terms of administration. Matthew Mott is the new coach with John Buchanan behind him. And maybe this time we can get a couple of weeks with the team before the matches start. The team can get together as a team.”

Will it be a new-look team for the new season?

“The team is more or less the same, but there is another auction and so we have to go into that with a strategy. Inshallah, Dada (Sourav) is there, we will make sure that we get (Chris) Gayle and (Brendon) McCullum to stick around (they had left after the first few matches of the inaugural edition)... Ricky (Ponting) comes, Ishant (Sharma) stays fit, (Ajit) Agarkar is fit, Umar Gul comes,” rattled off the entertainment all-rounder.

As in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, where he shares the screen with a fresher (Anushka Sharma), the Korbo lorbo jeetbo re man wants to share the dressing room with some newcomers this time.

“We are running a virtual academy where we are trying to get newer players, to hone them and pick them in the team. There will be a two-week camp some time in January and then in February. We would try and do them in Calcutta if we get the proper grounds,” said Khan.

Their shared passion for the Knight Riders binds the 43-year-old star on a reinvention route — he has deconstructed the romantic Raj and created the real Surinder in Rab Ne — and the 36-year-old cricketer who is in life-after-retirement mode.

“Staying mostly in Calcutta and spending time with my family is my priority now... My own pursuits apart (KKR, cricket academy, columns…) I will soon have to give some time to the family business. The seniors in the family are growing old and we have to take certain responsibilities,” said the Behala boy in plain kurta pyjama, a far cry from the shirt-swinging man on the Lord’s balcony.

It is this ordinariness that Shah Rukh is trying to capture in his screen characters as he crosses the age barrier of the romantic hero. “A common man, an ordinary man is content being where he is, he doesn’t want to be anywhere else,” is how he defines this persona (without any reference to his skipper, of course).

“I am basically a very simple, normal guy who thinks like a common father or a common husband or a common friend,” stressed Shah Rukh.

“If you meet a cricketer, whether it’s a Sourav Ganguly or a Sachin Tendulkar, (you will think) where is the extraordinariness around them? The work sometimes makes you look like that. In my personal life I am immensely common.”

In these two common men with far from common CVs rest the slam-bang fortunes of the city’s cricket team.