Indian Premier League

Better being a cheerleader?

Tuesday's defeat confirmed what had become evident early in the tournament -- that the Kolkata Knight Riders neither had the ammo nor the drive to make at least the semifinals of the Indian Premier League.

The inaugural season, last year, had seen the franchise finish sixth. This time, the Knights have been monopolising the absolute bottom of the eight-team table.

Poor man management, beginning with the shoddy manner in which icon Sourav Ganguly was sacked as captain, apart, the resources just haven't been utilised in the best manner.

Not that the most exciting exponents of Twenty20 pack the Knights' dressing room. Indeed, there are quite a few very average cricketers wearing the black and gold colours. 

To talk of the talent available, it's strange (if not shocking) that John Buchanan hasn't deemed it fit to give Bangladesh's premier strike bowler, Mashrafe Bin Mortaza, even one game.

Eleven have gone and the line-up for the last match, against the Royal Challengers Bangalore, saw as many as four changes. Not that the chopping and changing worked. 

The treatment meted out to Mortaza lends credence to whispers that Buchanan, who heads the franchise's cricket operations, didn't exactly want him in the squad and that principal owner Shahrukh Khan had 'intervened' during this year's auction. 

Apparently, one reason for signing Mortaza was to extend the Knights' 'appeal' in Bangladesh, which isn't much more than a stone's throw away from the franchise-city. If anything, folks there must be rather furious.

The 25-year-old right-arm quick, who is a handy bat too, is understood to be cut up. Frustrated as well. With perfectly legitimate reasons.

According to The Telegraph's sources, the other day, Mortaza told a confidant: "It would have been better to be a cheerleader. That way, I would have been doing something... what's the use of sitting?"

The Bangladesh captain, batsman Mohammed Ashraful, is probably in the same state of mind: He hasn't made the eleven in any of the Mumbai Indians' eleven games. The Sachin Tendulkar-led team has, however, been winning.

Like Mortaza, Ashraful was bought at the last auction, for two seasons. 

Mortaza went for a whopping 600,000 dollars, thanks to a rather bizarre bidding war between the Knights and the Kings XI Punjab, where Preity Zinta has a big stake.

For whatever reason, Shahrukh didn't want to come off second best and that was made clear to his men at the auction table in Goa. 

Ashraful, incidentally, came cheap for the Mukesh Ambani-owned Mumbai Indians. The franchise paid no more than $75,000.

While just about everybody else has, among other things, been getting invaluable exposure in the lead-up to next month's World T20, the Mortazas have been getting rusty.

Nothing worse could happen to a professional.

(Lokendra Pratap Sahi wrote this on the Kolkata Telegraph website).