Come to the grounds only if you feel safe: SRK

Shah Rukh Khan has a message for Knight Riders supporters: come to the grounds only if you feel safe.

“I appeal to all spectators at Eden Gardens, even it means my business getting hit, to come and watch the matches only if they are sure about the security arrangements,” the KKR co-owner said.

The terror attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore has cast a cloud on the Indian Premier League, but Shah Rukh said: “I feel bad for the players but you can’t stop life because of this…. For the common man on the street, who needs to go out and work for his daily bread, he cannot think of stopping his daily activities because of terrorism.”

Still, like “I had said during the release of my film Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi after 26/11, that only watch the film if you are going out to the theatres”, Shah Rukh is asking the crowds to come to the Eden only if they feel secure.

If the Indian Premier League kicks off on schedule — a big question mark hangs over it after the Centre suggested the matches should be postponed — Shah Rukh will be out in the grounds in his now-familiar role as the KKR twelfth man.

“Is baar baaki teams ke liye mera ek haath hi kaafi hai!” he joked, playing Thakur of Sholay with his left arm in sling after a shoulder surgery two weeks ago.

“I will be there and I will clap with both hands… I just hope they give me reason enough to clap,” Shah Rukh told The Telegraph this afternoon, on way from Mannat to the Yash Raj Studio for his first shoot after the surgery.

The last season, the team failed to make it to the final four. That hurt — “Losing is depressing,” he says — but Shah Rukh hopes to teach the boys a lesson he has learnt in his nearly 20 years in Bollywood: “It’s not about the knockout punch, it’s about lasting the 12 rounds.”

“When I started off I was like Mike Tyson, but now I have realised that you have to be either Mohammad Ali or George Foreman. As Jake LaMotta said, you can’t take me down. You can lose but don’t be a loser. I have had more failures than successes in my career but today people call Shah Rukh Khan a success because I could take all the beatings. I want to instil this feeling in all the Knight Rider kids,” he said.

If all the pep talk doesn’t work, SRK has another strategy up his sleeve. “I plan to get hold of a huge black bell this time which I want to play during the matches at Eden Gardens. It will go dong dong like those huge gongs. When I see the festival of Durga Puja and all the bells everywhere, I want to bring that flavour to the field. You may think I am an outsider but I am not an outsider in Calcutta. I had the option of Jaipur and Delhi but I always wanted Calcutta as my IPL team.”

He hoped the remixed team anthem would be even more popular than Korbo Lorbo Jeetbo Re was in the inaugural season.

But he won’t be in the Club House stand this time, egging on the Calcutta crowd. “I just have to ask the powers-that-be to allow me to sit near the boundary because I don’t think I will be able to sit with the crowds,” he said. “Out of love, a lot of people might pull my hand and that can hurt.”

His first shoot after the surgery was for KKR — to crown the six lucky girls who’ve won the cheerleader hunt on TV, Knights & Angels. “It’s a brand building exercise for the team because it is only through shows like this that I can tell the rest of the country about the Knight Riders. They wouldn’t react to a Kolkata Knight Riders billboard but shows like this will make our team a household name across the country.”

SRK’s most special “get well” message also has a Calcutta connection.

“The main criterion for our team to win is full fitness and I am messaging the main player of the team to get fit soon,” reads the SMS from Jagmohan Dalmiya, the man in charge at Eden.