Cricket or how it learnt to stop worrying and shamelessly sold itself

The 12th season of IPL kicks off next week. The teams opening the game will be Rajasthan 'Eveready' Royals versus Chennai Super 'Ambuja Cement' Kings. We are two hours from the Pepsi 'My can opening ceremony. This opening ceremony will go on for 7 days with 6 and a half days dedicated to our sponsors and half a day for the actual event. With 2 hours to go we have a set of revised rules for our 'John Players' and commentators.

1) While appealing for a leg before wicket instead of a howzaaaat, the players must say Gatoraaaaaaade!

2) Every batsman's bat must have more sponsors than an average F1 car or he can be banned for up to 2 matches. (One more mind numbing job for the third umpire: zooming in on the face of the bat and zooming out in a continuous loop. Zooming in and zooming out will continue for the next 10 minutes, so the big screen can finish showing all its sponsors).

3 Some of the cricketers have been bought over by corporates and have officially changed their name;

1) Sachin "Amaron Batteries" Tendulkar, lasts long... really long

2) Rahul "J K Cement wall" Dravid

3) Air India presents, Maharaj Singh, formerly known as Yuvraj Singh. Yuvraj Singh will now grow a moustache and wear a turban

(MSPaint has its limitations)

4) Mahendra 'cello pens' Dhoni; sorry, he is now Mahendra 'Pepsi' Dhoni; this just in he is Mahendra 'Candyman' Dhoni. The cricketers are selling themselves so fast, it is really hard to keep up.

7 DAYS LATER

Live from the chinaswamy stadium

Rajasthan Eveready Royals have won the Coca Cola bottle cap toss and elected to bat. The team will be given some time to plan thier strategy

5 Strategic time outs later

The bowler delivers the first ball, he starts off with a bouncer, and the batsman has suffered a nasty injury there. He seems to be bleeding; this injury is brought to you by Heinz tomato ketchup "If it is red and thick and not blood, its Heinz tomato ketchup."

While the batsman is treated, the teams will take some more strategic timeouts

More timeouts later

Because of lack of time for strategic time outs our key sponsors will decide the winner.

Day 2

A new day and 2 fresh teams will face each other in the Cuttack stadium. The bottle cap toss is won by Sanath “Aviva retirement plans” Jayasurya, and has elected to bat.

The teams shall be given some strategic timeouts for them to plan their strategy for today’s game

We advice all our viewers to buy a minimal TV size of 70”, so they can allot at least 20” to watching the actual match.
Here is a preview of what a cricket match will look like



If you can closely observe on the top right corner of the screen, you can observe a green spot. That was a still image after the bowler bowled a dot ball, the most uneventful ball in the game. The number of advertisments increase as the excitement increases

FEW HOURS LATER

The bowler delivers; it’s a no ball, the batsman gets a free hit, this time the regular cork ball will be replaced by a cosco ball because “no ball is better than a cosco ball”

IT STARTS RAINING

While the pitch is being covered, we would like to thank lord BALAJI for his blessings. You can also get your fair share of blessing if you donate money to the following address. Yes, Tirupathi is also a major sponsor in this event

#20, ...
....
Tirupathi

Such shameless advertisements go on for 30 days, finally the day the fans, I’m sorry the Crompton Greaves fans have been waiting for: the grand finale.

Since we do not have time for the actual game the match will be decided by the coca cola bottle cap toss

Thus ends another glorious season of IPL , we cannot thank our sponsors enough for making this event such a big success.

A day in the life of a commentator

The ICC has been struggling to get new commentators, their latest being Ravi Sastry. It is because of bad a selection system. The ICC picks Retired("Poverty Stricken") cricketers .Most of them being Indians, because we just lack the capacity to watch a game without making any remarks. Here is a fool proof system of getting the perfect commentator

First the written test

This is a MUST KNOW for all commentators, useless statistics, because this is the only thing more boring than the game itself. The written test will consist of 20 questions which are purely knowledge based. Here are some of the questions that appeared.

1. Name the cricketer who has scored most number of centuries other than Sachin tendulkar, Ricky ponting, Adam gilchrist, Sanath Jayasurya............ Rahul Dravid, whose debut was between the years 1988 – 1998

2. Who was cricketer who scored the fastest century by hitting less than five boundaries.

3. What was the highest 5th wicket partnership that was broken by getting a batsman run out.

4. Which was the first cricketer to take 200 wickets despite bowling only 20 maiden overs.

5. How can you commercialize IPL even more than it actually is( Extra credit).

6. Who was the non striker when muralitharan got his 700th wicket.

……

These pointless questions go on and on.

Round two

Group discussion

This system of filtration consists 10 groups containing 10 members each, playing word building consisting of cricketers and cricket terminologies. This is what happened in one of the groups. The contestants are given numbers and are referred to by their numbers and not their names.

All numbers appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real numbers, natural numbers or whole numbers living or dead, is purely coincidental

1: lets start from A - Alistar Campbell

2: L – Leg before wicket

3: T – Tail ender

4: R- Rattled the stumps

5: S- Seam

6: M- Middling the ball

This contest can go on for days months and sometimes even years on end, before there is a clear winner. The judges (retired umpires) still think, it is more interesting than viewing a test match.

Round 3

Grand Finale

A commentator must always justify a batsman’s shot, if the ball reaches the boundary line or support the bowler even if the batsman throws his wicket away in the dumbest possible way .Here the finalists will be shown cricket bloopers like hit wickets, easy catches dropped, and the 2 finalists who justify it the best will replace Ravi Shastry in the next Indian test series and hopefully replace commentator Radhakrishnan srinivasan (the guy on the right) forever

Here is how the event turned out

1 A batsman throws his bat, over his head and onto the stumps

Justification: The ball pitched on the rough and surprised the batsman causing him to change his shot at the last moment, gem of a delivery, we saw from the start of the spell that the bowler was looking for the rough, finally he has found it and it has rewarded him with a precious wicket

2 A Fielder drops a sitter

Justification: The dew on the grass has settled on the surface of the ball, causing it to slip.

3a when a batsman misses an easy ball which could have been hit for a six, even by a beginner

Justification: The bowler is trying to make the batsman play, the swing has totally deceived him (then the commentator requests a series previous dismissals of the batsman getting dismissed to be played)

3b the very next ball pitches in the same slot (thanks to hawk eye we can actually prove it) and this time is dispatched for a six

Justification: He gave him far too much room there, the batsman picked his slot waited and smashed it to the boundary

4 When rahul dravid defends a full toss at the 47th over

Justification He is looking to “Carry the innings” he has done the smart thing, he wants to play till the end and see his team through (despite the fact that there are 9 other still to bat waiting to dispatch any ball to the boundary)

And finally after these rigorous exercises we have a perfect commentator to commentate for the most imperfect, flawed, filled with a million rules “SPORT” watched by exactly a Billion people(mostly Indians, Pakistanis and Australians who get free passes)