SRK’s Red Chillies turn the heat on CAB

Two days after Jagmohan Dalmiya queered the pitch over Kolkata’s IPL episode, it’s Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s turn...

Two days after Jagmohan Dalmiya queered the pitch over Kolkata’s IPL episode, it’s Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s turn now to take a stern stand on the imbroglio. In what now appears to be hurtling towards a major tussle, Shah Rukh’s production company Red Chillies Entertainment has put its foot down at the face of protests from the Cricket Association of Bengal’s (CAB) dissidents over the sharing of Eden Gardens’ tickets for the IPL carnival.

Trashing claims from the CAB’s Dalmiya-led opposition over a “fairer” ticket-sharing arrangement with the CAB, a top functionary from Red Chillies who is directly handling SRK’s Kolkata IPL chapter has told The Indian Express that they want the BCCI to intervene and sort the dispute out as soon as possible.

“We don’t want to get into the CAB’s internal matters, whatever they are turning out to be. And we don’t want to know in detail what exactly is going on there. All that we want is that the BCCI should ensure that we get a clean Eden Gardens ground for the tournament. We don’t want to know about the CAB’s internal problems,” the top Red Chillies official told this daily today.

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Shah Rukh’s company bagged the rights to Eden for a Rs 10-crore booty, and has offered to share with the CAB 20 percent of the 86,000 tickets for free, while keeping the rest 80 percent for public sale.

Trouble began when Dalmiya & Co protested last Tuesday at the CAB’s special general meeting, claiming that the Prasun Mukherjee-led CAB administration should ask Red Chillies to share with the state body over 50 percent of the tickets for the seven matches it hosts.

However, Kolkata team owner Shah Rukh is in no mood to compromise on the 80-20 ticket-sharing arrangement. Says the Red Chillies official: “We have decided to share 20 per cent of the tickets with the CAB, that’s it. We don’t know what happened after that.

“We hope the BCCI ensures that everything is fine with the venue.”

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