Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) CEO Venky Mysore gave a shocking revelation on the the decision the franchise took in 2011 by removing Sourav Ganguly.
Kolkata Knight Riders picked Sourav Ganguly as the skipper in the inaugural edition of the IPL in 2008. But Mysore affirmed that the former Indian skipper failed to replicate the same captaincy for the franchise. KKR finished sixth at the end of the first season while they finished second last in the next season.
The same thing happened in 2010 as KKR again finished at the sixth place in the team standings, adding to the woes of Ganguly’s debilitated captaincy.
Three back to back failures of the side left the fans heartbroken. This led the franchise to take a call but Mysore said that he personally never faced any difficulty in sacking Ganguly. But at the same time, the management backed Ganguly’s individual performance.
“I’ll break that down into two parts. Personally, for me, it didn’t see like a big decision (not retaining Sourav Ganguly), only because I was unattached. If I had been part of the organisation for three years, or two years or one year, it would have been a tougher decision,” Mysore said in an interview on Youtube.
“This was like someone completely coming in from the outside, which I was, literally from the outside. Eventually, I realised, that for the organisation and for the owners, it was tough. It’s a decision and an approach that I proposed as I was given the mandate,” he added.
“I am not a complete lone-ranger maverick who runs off and wants to do my own thing. But at the same time, my entire career, I was used to being given the autonomy to operate, to also be accountable at the same time. I used to report to boards,” Mysore concluded.
Ganguly played for Kolkata Knight Riders from 2008 to 2010 and later joined Pune Warriors in 2011. He went on to play two seasons for that franchise before calling it quits from the cash-rich league. He played 59 matches and score 1349 runs with an average of 25.00.
