Sports
KKR takes Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo across India in seven languages this IPL season
From a four-storey mural in Kolkata to team buses in Chennai and Ahmedabad, KKR is turning a cricket campaign into a cultural one
KOLKATA: Kolkata Knight Riders have never been shy about making noise. This IPL season, they are making it in seven languages.
The franchise has rolled out one of the more ambitious branding exercises of the TATA IPL 2026 season, combining a sprawling outdoor campaign in its home city with a travelling multilingual initiative that takes the team’s iconic slogan, Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo, into the regional language of every away city it plays in.
In Kolkata, the campaign is impossible to miss. More than 75,000 square feet of outdoor space has been commandeered across the city, encompassing 65 billboards at key locations, branded pillars and pole kiosks along major routes, LED boards and metro branding. The centrepiece is a hand-painted mural across the full face of a four-storey building on Rashbehari Avenue near Bijan Setu. Inspired by the theme Prothom Bhalobasha KKR, meaning “first love” in Bengali, the mural features players Varun Chakravarthy, Ajinkya Rahane and Rinku Singh alongside the franchise’s famous rallying cry. It has already become a fan pilgrimage site, drawing crowds and generating considerable traction on social media.
Beyond Kolkata, KKR is doing something rather cleverer. As the team travels for away fixtures, its team bus carries the franchise slogan translated into the local language of each host city. The campaign began in Mumbai ahead of KKR’s first away game on 29th March, with the Marathi adaptation on display. Over the course of the season, the initiative will span seven cities and seven languages: Marathi in Mumbai, Tamil in Chennai, Gujarati in Ahmedabad, Hindi in Lucknow and Delhi, Telugu in Hyderabad, and Chhattisgarhi in Raipur.
Binda Dey, chief marketing officer of Knight Riders Sports, was candid about what the campaign is trying to achieve. “This season, we wanted to go beyond visibility and create moments of genuine cultural connection for our fans,” she said. “When fans in Chennai see Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo in Tamil, or fans in Ahmedabad see it in Gujarati, we want that to feel like a moment of recognition, not just advertising. Combined with our outdoor campaign in Kolkata that gives us mass visibility in our home market, we’re building a campaign that is as much about identity and pride as it is about cricket.”
The branding push sits alongside a wider set of fan engagement initiatives this season, including Knights Unplugged 3.0, the VIDA Knights Electrifying Box Cricket tournament and fan meet-ups across cities.
KKR, it is worth remembering, is not merely a cricket team. The Knight Riders brand spans four franchises across four countries, with nine trophies between them, including three IPL titles in 2012, 2014 and 2024. It is one of the more commercially sophisticated operations in world T20 cricket, and this campaign reflects that instinct precisely. In a sport where every franchise is chasing the same eyeballs, KKR has decided that the smartest way to stand out is not to shout louder, but to speak in the right tongue. Seven cities, seven languages, one battle cry. The purple and gold, it turns out, travels rather well.
Sports
Shikhar Dhawan launches a cricket high performance centre in Gwalior
The former India opener wants to build a nationwide network of academies — and he is starting in the heartland
Gwalior: Shikhar Dhawan is done playing. Now he wants to build the system that produces the next generation of players who will. Da One Sports, the performance and pathway-building arm of Dhawan’s Da One Group, has launched its first High Performance Centre (HPC) at the Aditya World Cricket Academy in Gwalior, in partnership with the Madhya Pradesh League and the Bundelkhand Bulls.
The centre is conceived as the first of many. The ambition, plainly stated, is a nationwide network of structured training hubs designed to pull talented young cricketers out of the regions and push them towards the highest levels of the sport.
The Gwalior facility is not a vanity project dressed up in cricket whites. It comes with turf and synthetic pitches, all-weather training nets, strength and conditioning facilities and dedicated recovery zones. Certified coaches, performance analysts and sports science experts are on the staff. Technology-driven tools including video analysis and performance tracking will be used to monitor athlete progression. Talent identification trials will feed a clear pathway from grassroots training to competitive opportunity. Admissions are already open.
Leading the centre as technical director is Saba Karim, the former India wicketkeeper and national selector, a man who has spent a career on both sides of the selection table. Mentorship will come from Madan Sharma, who coached Dhawan as a child and therefore knows better than most what it takes to get a raw talent to the top.
Dhawan, who chairs the Da One Group and won the Arjuna Award for his services to cricket, was direct about his motivation. “Cricket has given me everything, and I have always felt a strong responsibility to give back to the sport in a meaningful way,” he said. “Having experienced the journey myself, I understand what it takes to prepare champions at the highest level. With Da One Sports, our vision is to create a system that nurtures young talent with the right guidance, structure, and mindset, so they are better equipped to succeed. The Da One High Performance Centre is a step towards building that future.”
Anshita Gupta, chief executive of the Da One Group, framed the Gwalior launch as the foundation of something larger. “Our focus is on creating the right infrastructure and pathways that allow young athletes to transition from potential to performance,” she said. “This collaboration enables us to build a strong, structured ecosystem that supports athlete development at every stage.”
Rohit Wadhwa, team owner of the Bundelkhand Bulls and chairman of RW Group, was equally forthright. “The philosophy of Da One Sports strongly resonates with our vision of nurturing budding talent and helping them evolve into elite players,” he said. “This High Performance Centre is a step towards creating that environment, where young athletes are given the right platform, exposure, and support to realise their full potential.”
Mahanaarayaman Scindia, president of the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association, added that investing in grassroots cricket was essential to keeping India’s cricket ecosystem “sustainable, competitive, and globally dominant in the years ahead.”
India has never lacked for cricketing talent. What it has lacked, repeatedly and expensively, is the infrastructure to find that talent in the towns and districts where it quietly exists and give it somewhere to go. If Dhawan’s network of HPCs can begin to close that gap, the Gwalior academy may one day be remembered as the place where the next Dhawan first picked up a bat. The trials are open. The clock is running.
