Today, the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) are an extremely successful franchise team in the Indian Premier League. They just won the 2024 TATA IPL, and their association with Shah Rukh Khan has given them a large fan following. Actor Juhi Chawla, who is a very close family friend of Shah Rukh Khan, is a co-owner of KKR along with her husband businessman Jay Mehta.
Recently, while attending an event by Gujarat Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Chawla spoke about the early days of KKR, recalling that she and Shah Rukh Khan were contacted by Lalit Modi, the architect behind IPL, to buy a team as he wanted glamorous people to be associated with the upcoming league in order to bring more eyeballs to it. Chawla recalled, “Lalit (Modi) wanted that the owners should be glamorous people and have some glitz to them, and he approached us and said, Shah Rukh and you should be one of the team owners. At that time, I thought in India, cricket and film industry, those are the two most popular things, I thought how nice it would be if we can be a part of cricket.
” She continued, adding that even after her and SRK got the team, they didn’t know how to run a franchise. “We didn’t know anything about running a cricket franchise. So, I remember going to Shah Rukh’s house for meetings, where (from) putting the jingle together, to thinking of what uniform they’ll have, everything was done in house.
He made it black and gold, and I was not happy with it. I thought, ‘What is this black an.