Team India’s Wicket Ways
Satire/Dilip Bobb
50 July 22, 2019
F
ollowing the Indian team’s elimi-
nation in the semi-finals of the
Cricket World Cup 2019, agitat-
ed fans, cricket experts and related per-
sons flooded the BCCI’s website with
suggestions on how to avoid such situa-
tions in future where hype conceals
reality. The suggestions have been hand-
ed over to the Selection Committee
staffed by the same cricket experts.
Regardless, some suggestions are
worth recording:
Induct more “bits and pieces” players,
they seem to perform far better than
the specialised batsmen/bow -
lers/fielders when push comes to shove.
A parallel suggestion is to use cricket
expert (though many would dispute
that definition) Sanjay Manjrekar to
identify more of these specimens after
Ravindra Jadeja’s performance wit-
nessed him eating humble pie in the
commentator’s lounge. Mea Culpa, or
the equivalent of Virat Kohli tossing his
heavily sponsored bat in the air after
being dismissed cheaply.
Preserve a cast of Shikhar Dhawan’s
plaster cast which eliminated him from
the World Cup and put it in a special
box in the Selection Committee’s room
to serve as a reminder that injury to a
single player can play such havoc with
the selection of replacements and
movement up and down the batting
order which probably cost India its
pre-ordained place in the finals. Like
the semi-final proved, over-dependence
on one player, or two, means entering
the corridor of uncertainty, or, to put
more bluntly, eliminating the certainty
of a win.
One suggestion, obviously from a
BJP worker/supporter, is that Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and his vice-
captain, Amit Shah, should play a more
active role in such tournaments. Whenchants of “Modi, Modi” echo across the
stadium instead of “Dhoni, Dhoni”,
players are inspired to conduct surgical
strikes against the opposition, while if
Amit Shah was around, the suggestion
says, he would have induced at least
nine New Zealand players to switch to
India colours, thus ensuring team India
make it to the finals.
There should be a restriction on how
many wicket keepers can be selected
among the eleven—the Indian World
Cup team which played against the
Kiwis in the semi-finals had four wicket
keepers, three more than the sanc-
tioned strength. They were MS Dhoni,
Rishabh Pant, Dinesh Karthik and KL
Rahul and the word extras never meant
so much, especially considering how
the four performed in the crunch situa-
tion. It would have worked if all four
were allowed to wear wicket keeping
gloves while fielding but that proposal
was also dropped.
Perfecting the Reverse Sweep: Quite
a few fans made this suggestion while
weeping into their Tiffin boxes and
tearing up their tickets to the finals at
Lords. The suggestion that Indian bats-
men must perfect the reverse sweep is
accompanied by photos and press cut-
tings of the political events in Karna -
taka and Goa, hinting that players
should hold net sessions with MLAs
from the two states who are now
deemed to be experts in the art of
switch hitting.
Solving Number Four, as in a cross-
word puzzle where four up and four
down reflects the dilemma faced by the
Indian team management, basically
Kohli and Ravi Shastri. Not being able
to fill the number four slot proved the
equivalent of hit wicket for the Indian
team, where the regular number four,
as in KL Rahul, was made to open,leaving the specialist position in the
hands of the inexperienced or the unac-
customed. India’s number four problem
turned into a middle order muddle
which contributed to its downfall
when the chips were down, along with
wickets.
Dhoni dilemma: The flood of sugges-
tions concerning the future of Dhoni is
a reflection of how he has agitated the
minds of fans, selectors and captains
alike with his pregnant silence on
whether he will gracefully retire or
continue to induce cardiac episodes in
the watching public. In deference to his
heroic contributions to Indian cricket,
belling the cat has been declared a
no ball.
Too many cooks could best describe
the number of coaches now appended
to the Indian team, for batting, bowl-
ing, fielding, physio and trainer. Head
coach Shastri is quite visible but the
rest, which includes Sanjay Bangar and
Bharat Arun, are under the baggage
scanner to see whether they are merely
accompanied baggage. Many sugges-
tions were actually queries about their
contribution and whether some meas-
ure of Rahul Gandhi-type accountabili-
ty was the need of the hour.
Eliminate the hype: Considering the
Big Fat Indian Wedding atmosphere
created by the Bharat Army and our
Energiser Bunny commentators, the
loss to New Zealand, considered the
real bunnies, was made ever more
painful. It was time to recall a quote by
tennis sensation Boris Becker, when he
was knocked out of Wimbledon by an
unfancied opponent: “Nobody died, I
just lost a tennis match.”Twitter: @indialegalmedia
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