![\"Yusuf](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/kirit_azaaad_1781007282536_1781007329624_d203eab2-89da-4384-b82d-6cb94956447d.png\" "\\"Yusuf")
Yusuf Pathan is reportedly among the rebels against Team Mamata; Kirit Azad remains firmly with her; and Sourav Ganguly, and alleged emissary, has denied any role whatsoever. (AP, PTI File Photos)<\/p>\nThe 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.<\/p>\n
Yusuf Pathan is reportedly among the rebels against Team Mamata; Kirit Azad remains firmly with her; and Sourav Ganguly, and alleged emissary, has denied any role whatsoever. (AP, PTI File Photos)<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 a right-hand batter and an aggressive right-arm off-break bowler.<\/p>\n
Kirti Azad slams rebels<\/p>\n
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 \u201cno one else has signed on the dotted line\u201d.<\/p>\n
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.”<\/p>\n
Azad said he and the other loyalists were \u201cborn out of struggle\u201d. Son of former Bihar CM Bhagwat Jha Azad, who was a Congress stalwart and freedom fighter, Kirti Azad<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Yusuf Pathan, the other all-rounder<\/p>\n In the opposite corner is Yusuf Pathan<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n