The Trinamool Congress’s crisis has an unlikely sub-plot. Three familiar names from Indian cricket are caught up in it, and each is standing in a different corner.
The most vocal is Kirti Azad, a member of India’s 1983 World Cup-winning side and now the TMC’s Bardhaman-Durgapur MP, who has emerged as one of Mamata Banerjee’s fiercest defenders against the rebels. Originally from Bihar but a longtime leader with political roots in many places, Azad used to be an all-rounder — a right-hand batter and an aggressive right-arm off-break bowler.
Kirti Azad slams rebels
Azad has dismissed the rebels’ claim of having 20 MPs with them. He called it “the fake and fabricated narrative of the dirty tricks department of BJP,” insisting only 13 had attended the rebel meeting and “no one else has signed on the dotted line”.
He was blunt about their motives at a press meet in New Delhi on Tuesday: “If you want to go to the BJP, say that openly”; and about Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, who leads the revolt: “Kakoli lost five elections, yet Mamata Banerjee made her an MP.”
Azad said he and the other loyalists were “born out of struggle”. Son of former Bihar CM Bhagwat Jha Azad, who was a Congress stalwart and freedom fighter, Kirti Azad has had a political path that runs through three parties, the BJP and the Congress, besides the TMC at present. He was MLA in Delhi, then a multi-term MP from Darbhanga in Bihar, before winning his current Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal for the TMC.
Fellow all-rounder Yusuf Pathan
In the opposite corner is Yusuf Pathan, of India’s 2011 World Cup-winning squad and the TMC’s Baharampur MP, who also happened to be a batter-spinner like Kirti Azad.
Pathan, a Gujarati who became an IPL star with Kolkata Knight Riders, is now the subject of defection talk as the party’s Lok Sabha unit splits and a rebel camp claims nearly 20 of its 28 MPs back the NDA.
Mahua Moitra has publicly accused Pathan, who’s been quiet as of June 9 afternoon, of “rushing to Delhi” at Union home minister and BJP leader Amit Shah’s call. Shah and PM Narendra Modi happen to be Gujarati too.
Moitra told Pathan to show “some shame and some spine”.
Another Mamata loyalist MP Kalyan Banerjee said Pathan had told him Shah had summoned him. Pathan has not taken a position publicly.
‘Dada’ denies he has a role
The third is the arguably the biggest star among the three, Sourav Ganguly — not a politician at all, but pulled in regardless.
A front-page report in a Bangla daily last week said the former India captain acted as Mamata Banerjee’s emissary, asking Pathan to vacate his seat so she could contest a by-election. Ganguly rejected it outright in a June 6 statement, saying he “never approached or contacted Mr Yusuf Pathan” and had “never been involved in political matters at any stage”, and urging the media not to “fall prey to rumours and speculations”.
The threads run back to the dressing room as much as to numbers in the Parliament House. Pathan and Ganguly were once teammates at the Kolkata Knight Riders; Azad and Pathan are both World Cup winners; Ganguly captained India to the 2003 WC final and built a new and aggressive Indian cricketing tradition by all accounts.
The TMC has long drawn candidates from cinema and sport, and in 2024 sent both Azad and Pathan to Parliament from Bengal, Pathan unseating five-term Congressman Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury by about 85,000 votes.
