Facebook has a profile of the phenomenon: it’s not about a person, rather the absence of someone worshiped by the cricket crazy people of West Bengal. The profile — No Dada No KKR (NDNK) — is liked by 1,198 people on the last count, full of venom-spewing by fans of Sourav Ganguly, who couldn’t find a place in the Kolkata Knight Riders team and was left unsold at the auction.
It is a humiliation his supporters are not ready to take lying down.
“Dada is the highest run-getter for Kolkata for two years. Still not considered. It will be a flop this season. All bad wishes!” was what Tejas Sai has commented about the Indian Premier League 4 on the Facebook page. NDNK gang has leaped from the virtual to the real world, and was found distributing leaflets during Kolkata Knight Riders’ first home match which it won over the Deccan Chargers on Monday.
“We have decided to boycott all KKR matches in Eden. What would you do? Would you like to watch all the IPL matches at the Eden?” screamed the leaflets handed to the spectators in the half-empty stadium that can accommodate about 63,500.
Smooth-talker Shah Rukh Khan, KKR’s principal owner, realised what was happening, trying in vain to salvage the situation. “Dada is always a part of our team, in soul and spirit,” he said after the game. Next day he followed it up with a more businessman like act: he slashed the price of the cheapest ticket to Rs400 from Rs500. The Rs900 ticket was brought down to Rs500 while the Rs1,200 ticket will now get sold for Rs900. The price of the premium Rs9,000 ticket was, however, kept unchanged.
Was it simply because of the absence of Sourav? While the NDNK gang would make you believe that, former national selector Sambaran Banerjee found other reasons also.
“The IPL4 is closely following the World Cup. I believe there was an element of spectators’ fatigue in the low turnout at the stadium for the KKR match,” Banerjee told DNA.
Banerjee, however, didn’t quite rule out the impact of Sourav’s absence.
“Just like there would be more people in the stadium in Mumbai if Sachin is playing, the response from the cricket-lovers of Kolkata would have been higher if Sourav played that day,” he said.
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