Cricket 2.0

by Tim Wigmore

  This was a ‘hub and spoke model’, Mysore said, with India the hub. ‘From an operational perspective, we try to bring in all the efficiencies by looking at the team that’s in India and the ways it can support what we do in Trinidad and Tobago.’

  KKR’s decision to partner with TKR – and, briefly, a team from Cape Town in South Africa’s aborted T20 franchise league in 2018 – was driven by a belief that this would make the side more attractive for sponsors. ‘We are able to provide a lot more value for brand and opportunities for them to activate throughout the year,’ Mysore explained.

  Franchises abroad also gave fans another way of staying involved in the team. ‘The two pillars on which you build a sports franchise are your brand and fan base. Through what we’re doing you build your brand and extend your fan base quite significantly.’

  Merchandising only accounted for around 5% of all KKR’s revenue, as of 2018; by a Knight Riders team playing more, albeit in the Caribbean, Mysore hoped that figure would increase.

  Yet for commercial possibilities to open up as KKR envisaged, the Indian board would need to allow Indian players to play T20 leagues abroad.

  The lack of Indian players abroad helps explain why other IPL franchises have not yet emulated the Knight Riders in buying a team overseas. Indian fans don’t watch cricket; they watch Indian cricketers.

  Still, owning TKR brought natural synergies, with KKR able to use their expertise to build a new brand and, by transferring staff and methods honed in India, keep costs down. ‘The intention is to bring best practices to each of these businesses and leagues around the world,’ Mysore said. ‘That will financially make it very efficient for us – we don’t have to recreate the teams in those other countries and franchises.’

  While commercial logic drove the links between KKR and TKR, KKR soon recognised that the partnership could bring on-field benefits too.

  Coaches and trainers were contracted to both teams, rather than just one, with Simon Katich, the former Australian player and KKR assistant coach, given head coaching experience with TKR. This allowed staff to work together across different teams and leagues to develop their expertise and range of experiences.

  ‘We want to replicate the culture of the Knight Riders organisation,’ Mysore said. ‘We try to keep the core of our support staff the same.’ The continuities beyond the franchises, Katich observed, are particularly beneficial at the start of a T20 league. While most rivals are trying to assemble their new teams, for the Knight Riders ‘it feels like business as usual’.

  Although the IPL and CPL operated completely different contracting systems, meaning players could not simply be contracted to both Knight Riders franchises, strong links in personnel developed between the different sides. A.R. Srikkanth worked as an analyst for both teams. He used his involvement with TKR to scout emerging talent, from the Caribbean and elsewhere, and develop knowledge which could then aid KKR – either helping to inform whom to sign, or simply giving more knowledge of players whom they would subsequently encounter in the IPL.

  As an analyst from TKR, Srikkanth faced many players who represent Kolkata, giving him first-hand experience of how opponents look at these players. With Kolkata, Srikkanth then helps the players second-guess what IPL opponents might have planned for them. ‘We’ve done that quite a few times. We’ve given information to the players about what the opposition, especially the coaches, might think about them. And give them a heads-up as to what to expect in the game.’ The opener Chris Lynn regularly played against Trinbago, before later signing with them, so Srikkanth knew that Kolkata’s opponents would be likely to focus on bowling either to Lynn’s hips or slower and fuller.

  The City Football Group model is predicated on playing the same style of football at all their teams around the world, abetting the transfer of players, coaches and ideas between teams. Increasingly, tactics used at one Knight Riders franchise are being transferred to the other. ‘If you look at the way we play in the CPL, as well as at KKR, it’s pretty similar,’ explained Srikkanth. ‘We go hard at the top and it doesn’t matter if we lose wickets in a cluster because we’ve got the batting in the team to take responsibility and get the team to a decent score.’ In 2018, Sunil Narine opened with the Australian Chris Lynn both for Kolkata and Trinbago.

  Having a team in the Caribbean, which has comfortably produced more elite T20 talent in the world per head of population than any other region, helped Kolkata remain at the cutting edge of T20 thinking. And it provided opportunities for experimentation: tactics could be trialled in the Caribbean and then, if successful, mimicked in the IPL. At the CPL auction, Mysore himself could be observed personally selecting TKR’s squad. By maintaining a year-round Knight Riders operation, he could also ensure that Kolkata’s needs were attended to outside of the IPL season itself: in 2018 the physio Zeph Nicholas was flown from Trinidad to Antigua by the Knight Riders just to work with their star all-rounder Andre Russell, who would begin the next IPL season in astounding form.

  This was one example of how, in pursuit of competitive advantage, Kolkata were trying to move from being a team who merely played the IPL every year into a 12-months-a-year operation. After 2018, KKR built an academy in Kolkata. Any players could come there, anytime. The idea was that, whenever they were free, domestic players would come to Kolkata, where their skills could be honed, and physios could ensure they were in prime shape when the squad reassembled at the start of each season.

  ‘This is now clearly a round-the-year activity for us,’ Mysore said. ‘We’re genuinely saying if we can help them improve as players in skills and fitness and they do well in domestic cricket, they perform, then you’re suddenly going to start seeing a different kind of dynamics within the team, because the conversation will be taking place throughout the year. It turns it into a very different environment. It makes it richer and we’re seeing already that players are becoming more confident and getting better. That is going to help KKR too in the end.’

  In early 2019, City Football Group announced that they had bought a team in China, the seventh club to be part of their network. If KKR remain a long way beyond in their collection of sides, this does not owe to any lack of ambition.

  ‘The whole global strategy of expanding the Knight Riders brand into other leagues is a well-thought-out plan,’ Mysore explained. ‘We keep fine-tuning this model but it has reached a certain level of stability and we’re quite happy with the model that we’ve built. The intent is to take this model and, like all global companies do, replicate this model in different geographies and hopefully get some good positive results. We have certainly outperformed in the Caribbean. Three championships in four years is an amazing job.’

  As City Football Group already have done, so Mysore and the Knight Riders hope to expand into the United States. ‘We’re always looking at markets. I know there’s a lot going on in the Emirates, and people are talking about North America.

  ‘We’ve passed on a couple of opportunities as well but at the same time whenever we think it’s a good fit and we can build our brand, expand our brand and expand our fan base in different geographies and if the business model makes sense then we’re always ready. We’ve gained a lot of experience in how to manage from a distance so from that perspective I’d have to say we’re way ahead of the curve.

  ‘Whenever there’s a new league that’s being contemplated, invariably the first proposal lands up on our desk,’ Mysore said. ‘Where we’re able to tick all the boxes, we’ll invariably be there.’

  For the Knight Riders – and, perhaps, other imitators – the ultimate ambition extends well beyond merely thriving in the IPL. It is to develop a global network of teams that will reshape the sport.

  TEN

  THE THRILL OF THE CHASE

  ‘Do you want to be remembered as a legend or do you want to be remembered as a mercenary?’

  West Indies Cricket Board administrator to Kieron Pollard in 2010

  ‘Kieron Pollard, in my opinion,
is not a cricketer’

  Former West Indies bowler Michael Holding

  As Kieron Pollard crouched in his stance his bat looked like a toothpick in his hands. This was not because the bat was small – in the hands of a normal man it would look like a railway sleeper – but because Pollard, clad from head to toe in Trinidad and Tobago red, was a giant. Standing six feet, four inches tall and weighing 98kg, he was built more like a heavyweight boxer than a cricketer. As the bowler ran in, Pollard tapped his bat delicately on the ground – perhaps he feared he might break it if he exerted any more force – and looked up.

  Pollard had just arrived at the crease in Hyderabad in a group stage match of the 2009 Champions League T20. Pollard was playing for his native Trinidad and Tobago against New South Wales. It was the 14th over of the match and he was about to play an innings that would transform not only his life, but T20 cricket.

  ‘That innings changed everything for me personally,’ remembered Pollard. ‘I played international cricket beforehand, but that innings changed the way everyone looked at me as a cricketer.’

  With 24 balls remaining Trinidad and Tobago required an improbable 51 runs to win – New South Wales, one of the strongest T20 teams in the world, had never conceded that many in the final four overs of an innings. A victory for Trinidad and Tobago would virtually guarantee their progression to the semi-finals of the inaugural Champions League – the most expensive tournament in cricket history, sold to the Indian broadcaster ESPN Star Sports for $1 billion earlier that year and competed for by the world’s strongest T20 clubs.

  The trouble facing Pollard and his partner at the crease, Sherwin Ganga, was that 12 of the remaining 24 balls would be bowled by Brett Lee – one of the best and fastest bowlers in the world. Lee’s first two overs that evening had cost just nine runs and had taken one wicket. Plausibly, Trinidad and Tobago could hope for 16 runs off Lee’s 12 balls which would leave 35 to get off the remaining 12 deliveries.

  The New South Wales captain, Simon Katich, could have given the ball to the off-spinner Nathan Hauritz or the leg-spinner Steve Smith – but bowling spin at the death was always considered risky. Katich’s other frontline quick bowler, the left-armer Doug Bollinger, had already finished his four overs which left the medium-pacer Moises Henriques as his only option.

  Henriques was exactly the kind of bowler that Pollard liked to face: not fast enough to push him back with a short ball nor accurate enough to consistently nail his yorker. But recognising the opportunity was the easy part; it was another thing actually taking it.

  Pollard was still only 22, yet already bigger and stronger than most players in the world. ‘He was always a very big fellow,’ recalled Daren Ganga, Pollard’s captain at Trinidad and Tobago. ‘Even as a teenager he carried the same sort of size so it was very easy to identify him.’

  Three years previously Pollard announced himself to the Caribbean as a T20 player of great potential when, aged just 19, he bludgeoned 83 off just 38 balls against St Kitts and Nevis in the semi-final of the Stanford T20. ‘That was a significant innings for me,’ said Pollard. ‘That brought me on the map as well in terms of my ability to hit long balls.’

  Since then he had played a number of brutal cameos – the most recent of which came in Trinidad and Tobago’s previous Champions League match against the IPL’s Deccan Chargers. Pollard’s 14-ball 31 included four sixes and was instrumental in toppling a heavily favoured IPL team.

  ‘The moment that defined us is when we played that game against Deccan Chargers in Hyderabad and we won against an IPL team,’ said Pollard. However, what he was about to do against New South Wales would leave an indelible mark on his own career.

  The first ball of the 17th over was a wide and the fifth was a dot ball. But aside from those two deliveries the other five balls were all smashed to the boundary. In a remarkable assault Pollard plundered three sixes and two fours from Henriques’ over. ‘It was just a matter of trying to clear the boundary every delivery,’ said Pollard. The bowling was poor – two full balls right in the slot, one short slower ball, and a full toss – but the power of Pollard’s hitting was magnificent. Bad balls or not they still had to be dealt with. The sixes didn’t just clear the ropes, they sailed far into the stands as if jet-powered. In the space of just six balls, Pollard had scored 27 runs and had turned the match on its head.

  ‘I was focused and I was determined,’ recalled Pollard. ‘When it comes to these sorts of big games and you’re playing against these big players there’s some fire inside me that actually comes out even more in these sorts of situations.’

  To Pollard and to many of the players that day there was more meaning to that match than simply the result. Two IPL seasons had already been played and the Champions League T20 – played in India and in front of a global television audience – represented a shop window for players to attract IPL interest.

  ‘I remember clearly when we arrived in India to play the first edition of the Champions League there was a lot of fanfare behind the tournament,’ said Ganga. ‘The IPL had already taken off and the microscope and the focus and the buzz around T20 tournaments and this tournament in particular got a little bit to the heads of my players. You had all these different guys doing different funky hairstyles, trying to define themselves and to be recognised because they understood the opportunities which were before them in terms of getting an IPL contract and having good performances and how that will impact them and their careers.’

  Pollard was at the forefront of this urge to be recognised and had ‘20-20’ shaved on the side of his head and sported large diamond earrings. Brazenly, Pollard also asked Ganga if he could bat at number three – where he had scored his 83 against St Kitts and Nevis three years previously but had only batted twice in his career. He normally batted at five, six or seven.

  ‘I had a young guy like Pollard who was trying to upset the apple cart in terms of trying to bat higher on the premise of him really wanting to do well and progress his career,’ said Ganga. ‘Those were challenges that I faced as a captain – especially with the young players who were eager to do so well.’

  Pollard batted at number seven that day, but the 27-run over had bent the game to his will, leaving Trinidad and Tobago only requiring 24 from the last three overs. Pollard’s enormous strength allowed him to find the boundary even when he mistimed or edged the ball. Indeed, from the fourth ball of Lee’s next over, Pollard’s thick edge brought a boundary and took Trinidad and Tobago to the brink of victory with only 16 required from 12 balls.

  Despite his mauling in the 16th over Henriques returned for the 18th. The first ball was a low full toss and Pollard hammered it back down the ground for four; the second was another low full toss and this time Pollard dispatched it back over the bowler’s head for six. ‘It was see ball, hit ball. I was in a zone where I didn’t think I would mistime anything. And it worked.’

  Henriques landed the third delivery but by now Pollard was into his groove: ‘I was seeing the ball big and just wanted to finish it.’ Pollard took a small stride forward and bludgeoned the ball hard, flat and over long off for six. The boundary, his eighth in nine balls against Henriques, brought up both his own fifty – off just 18 balls and the victory, with an absurd nine balls to spare. As the final six soared into the stands Pollard bent back with his bat in one hand and let out an almighty roar. His entire body shook as he released the nervous energy of the run chase and bellowed into the Hyderabad night sky.

  Pollard’s innings was momentous. It gave rise to a new T20 megastar, and redefined what people thought was possible in run chases. Teams had scored more runs in the last four overs of a match before but no team had ever scored so fast. Trinidad and Tobago had razed 51 runs in 15 balls – a run rate of 20.40 runs per over. Hitting of such brutal efficiency had rarely been seen in cricket and never on such a big occasion. It was a transformative moment in the evolution of T20 batting. Quite suddenly – in less than half an hour of crazy hitting – no total was
safe, no target was out of reach and no asking rate was too steep.

  Three months and three days after the Hyderabad heist, Pollard found himself the subject of a fierce bidding war in the IPL auction between Chennai Super Kings, Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Mumbai Indians, to whom he was eventually sold for $750,000. This made him the joint most expensive player at the auction, despite only averaging 17.50 in T20 internationals and 13.50 in ODIs.

  ‘I was overwhelmed, seeing that sort of price. Straightaway the pressure got to you but then you realise it was an opportunity for you to go out and showcase your talent and show that you’re really worth every penny of it.’

  ***

  As a young boy Pollard never dreamed of being a millionaire cricketer. T20 was not played at professional level until he was 16 years old and the IPL did not exist until he was 20. ‘I never even thought you’d have another version of cricket,’ he remembered. ‘I always grew up watching Test cricket and 50-over cricket and aiming to represent Trinidad and Tobago and then the West Indies. That was the goal.’

  Pollard grew up a long way from the riches of the IPL, and the global T20 circuit on a housing estate of 20 prefabricated flats called Maloney Gardens, located on the East-West Corridor of Trinidad – a half-hour drive from the capital, Port of Spain. The area was marked by pastel-coloured flats with boarded windows and draped with drying washing. The flats were punctuated by overgrown fields. It was here that Pollard spent his formative years.

  Pollard was raised alongside two younger sisters by his single mother in tough circumstances. They were not a wealthy family and Maloney Gardens was synonymous with drugs, gang violence and gun crime.

  ‘Where I grew up it has a stigma for violence and drugs,’ said Pollard, ‘but there was also a lot of sport.’ And it was sport that gave Pollard’s life meaning and direction. ‘It was all about “play” as we would say.