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It has been rumoured that Sourav Ganguly will be back as the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders for the third season of the Indian Premier League after Brendon McCullum – and a host of other New Zealand cricketers – signed contracts with New Zealand cricket to play against Australia during the same time as the IPL. This could mean that McCullum, the current KKR captain could end up missing out on many games in the tournament, and for the sake of continuity, it did make sense to have Ganguly back. Ricky Ponting could have been the other captain in the running, but he too would be away on some of the international duties as the captain of the Australian team.

Ganguly had been the captain of the KKR team in the first season of the IPL, but was replaced by McCullum for the second season at the behest of the coach, John Buchanan. However, the Knight Riders went from one defeat to another in the second season and finished last in the tournament.

Apparently, Ganguly and the owner of the team, Shah rukh Khan met in South Africa over the ICC World T20, and discussed captaincy amongst other issues. The coaching angle was also a part of the discussion and for now, it does seem like John Wright and Michael Bevan have come up as two names in the front-running for taking over Buchanan’s role. Wright had coached India when Ganguly was the national team’s captain, where as Bevan was recently a part of the Indian Cricket League (ICL), also as a coach but broke away from them.

On his part, Ganguly said, “I don’t take the decision of KKR alone. The decision has not been made yet.”

In another development, Sourav Ganguly has accused the BCCI of having different set of rules for different cricketers during his playing times. He was referring to the partial treatment meted out to him by having had him dropped while other cricketers were allowed to make comebacks. He said, “If I was playing, I too would have been performing well but I have taken a decision… the BCCI has different rules for different people.”

The BCCI has retaliated back by saying that they had the same rules for everyone and as far as they were concerned, the selection matters were left to the expertise of the selectors. They denied that they were prejudiced against any player.