Kolkata Knight Riders manager John Buchanan will not be naming a permanent captain for the IPL.
Knight Riders coach says no permanent skipper for IPL season
Kolkata Knight Riders manager John Buchanan will not be naming a permanent captain for the Indian Premier League, saying he might use a committee system for the new season.
Kolkata fans are in uproar with the news that former India captain Sourav Ganguly will not remain in charge of the Knight Riders for the new IPL season.
Former Australia coach Buchanan insists Ganguly and the rest of the players are happy with his new fluid plan for captaincy during the season.
With the likes of Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum and Brad Hodge at his disposal, Buchanan wants to use all their experience and is against naming one permanent captain for the season.
Buchanan even hinted that more than one player could be used to lead the side during a single IPL game.
Captaincy
"When we put out our squad, we did not nominate a captain and that's the way it will be," Buchanan said. "The captaincy is still open.
"We are a group of players who are going to play a tournament, that's the first part. The second part is we then pick a team. In that particular game we will have a specific captain because we have to do that.
"But once we are into that game, we may use four of five different people. We also may use only one, but that decision will be made very clear to all the players in the game prior to the start."
Although Ganguly was said to be behind the decision, he was less than enthusiastic as he sat alongside Buchanan at a press conference.
"It's new and we would all have to see where this goes," Ganguly said. "John has the right to make these decisions. He has views and he is pretty open about his views.
"As far as I'm concerned, I think we all need to perform and my task would be to get the runs and take the wickets."
South African move
Ganguly backed the decision to switch the tournament to South Africa due to security concerns back in India - when elections will be taking place.
"There are elections in the country and that's bigger than anything else and
security will be a concern," Ganguly added. "With the IPL there are a lot of players and several states are involved.
"It's a massive tournament. You don't want anything unhappy to happen. The option was to go to South Africa and I think that's the best decision the
IPL have made."
Buchanan says the move has hampered his preparations for the upcoming season, due to the uncertainty of the schedule.
"The toughest challenge which we face and which all the other teams face at the moment is waiting to know what the schedule is going to be and what the tournament is going to be like," he said.
"We need to know where the games are going to be played and potentially what the conditions are going to be like so therefore what sort of squad we need to take with us.
"It's a little bit of a guessing game at the moment (as to) how it's all going to stick together."
