IPL-3 is in full swing. Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty, movie actors and co-owners of, respectively, Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals, are managing cricketers and a cricket franchise. How does that work? Express reporters spent time with both, on and off the field, to find out
Preity Zinta (Kings XI)
These, then, are the remains of the day.
It’s a minute past midnight, March 14, Sunday morning. The plastic dug-out feels lethargic. The match is over: the Delhi Daredevils have thrashed Kings XI Punjab by five wickets at the PCA Stadium in Mohali — at home. Through all the silence, a cheering owner tries to soften the blow.
Dressed in the team’s colours with the logo stitched alongside, Preity Zinta, actor and co-owner of the IPL team, is at peace. Games are won, and sometimes lost. “When there is a major crisis, I’m the calmest person on the planet. I thrive in chaos. We’re one big family and we will solve it,” she says. Three hours of trying to inspire her team didn’t.
She isn’t one to give up though; clapping and cheering by the dug-out is part of the itinerary of ownership. During the post-match presentation ceremony, as part of the ensemble of dignitaries, she’s often seen texting away furiously. She instinctively seems to know each time the camera pans to her and, unfazed in front of 40,000 spectators at the ground, and a few million on television, she breaks into her smiling and waving routine.
The IPL may have found an emotional connect with the common man but Zinta is both interested and distanced. “It was during the first season against the Chennai Super Kings that I learned to lose. It was the highest scoring match of the season and we lost a very close game. I had to earn the respect of the people, my people, and my cricketers. When Chennai was nearing victory, fans told me my money was going down the drain. They asked me to walk away from the loss. But I stood there and watched us lose. It was a moment of clarity for me,” she says.
The support system, however, worked like clockwork. “When I work with someone, they know everything about me and I know everything about them. I do not have glass walls around me. I was expected to leave the stadium but I didn’t. The players came around and thanked me for being there for them,” Zinta says, still somewhat upset with this latest loss to Delhi.
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The clock reads 2 pm on a Saturday afternoon in Chandigarh, the lazy capital of Punjab. Some hundred-odd men dressed in khaki clothes and turbans loiter around the foyer of a five-star lobby, intervening and frisking every entrant into the area. As time passes, the area picks pace, men and women now strolling in with enthusiasm and purpose.
A few feet inside, past the security and inside a swanky room, the clock reads 2:15 pm. But unlike the weekend in Mohali, it’s filled with hyper kinetic energy waiting to be turned into its potential form.
For Zinta, it’s match day.
Cross-legged on the couch and without the make-up associated with her other profession, she watches the first game scheduled for the day — Mumbai Indians vs Rajasthan Royals.
Co-owning the Kings XI Punjab for the last two years — and entering its third edition — has seen her give up her acting career for large gaps. Offers for a role from the film industry have come (and have been rejected, she says), but Zinta’s focus on her current job is a fixation.
“Initially, I took eight months off from the movies, it suddenly became 18. It was important for me to stay here and learn everything from scratch about the game,” she says.
So how much does she know now? “When I got into cricket, I only knew what fours and sixers were. Today, I know what a shorter ball, good length delivery or a yorker is. This I learnt on my own.” On her own? “When I got into the movies I didn’t go to film school.”
She continues. “It’s been incredible how far I’ve managed to come on my own by just watching the game. I didn’t think I would fall in love with cricket so much,” she says and pauses, distracted by a Sachin Tendulkar boundary on the television.
The clock is ticking and it’s time for her to begin the process of looking glamorous, but Zinta cannot peel her eyes off the telly. “He is a legend,” she says, holding her breath. “When the IPL began all I wanted as an owner was Tendulkar in my team. But they told me it was not possible.”
She’s put in the hard yards for this role. Zinta went to Harvard to study the complexities behind a business... “I studied negotiations, deal making, mergers, and acquisitions as part of a business course. I didn’t do sports management, but I did present the IPL as one of my case studies. I think knowledge is the key and the course did help to some extent.
“Harvard taught me to think big. But to think business in India, nobody can teach you. In India you got to think desi, things work differently,” she says.
The screws have turned since the beginning, but Zinta recalls the difficult times. “What I felt intimidated about was that I was the only woman then (these days there are a few more), and the actress tag became a handicap. I felt I didn’t have to be a glamour doll or pout and pose and do my make-up to be accepted.”
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It’s 7 pm — late, already — and the pre-match entertainment has already begun. She might make it just in time for the game. The foyer is a circus trying to get autographs, sound bytes or just a photograph. She wades past the crowd through to the front into a waiting car, and the entire process moves without discomfort, throwing caution to both the delay and the wind.
Stress, and more stress, is always there before and after a game. Like the incident where Harbhajan Singh (of the Mumbai Indians) slapped Sreesanth (from her Kings XI Punjab). That got her a little twitchy, but nothing eradicated the sense of security in her newest profession. “Even when something goes wrong, I smile and sign pieces of paper. A typical day in my life during the IPL is controversy management. In the middle of everything, the temple priest comes with prasad to give to the boys. If I can get to sneak to the gym after all this, it is great. Then I go to the stadium and can barely hear or see anything, like a horse with blinders on. I care too much. Come on, we’re Punjab, the most glamorous, aggressive and colourful team in this tournament,” she says.
Five minutes before the start, Zinta is on the ground and takes her place next to the players in the dug-out — her domain for the next three hours. Smiles erupt from her men in uniform — some coy, some star-struck, all of them comfortable. But whatever happens from here on, she knows it’s just a game.
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