Wednesday 2 February 2011

ICC should ban any references to 1983 and the Indian Cricket Team in the run up to World Cup 2011

For the good of mankind and to restore public sanity by and large, may I launch a formal request to the International Cricket Council asking them to ban the following two things in the media?
1. Any reference to the 1983 world cup victory
2. References to the chances of India winning this edition of the world cup.

It is just too tiring to see every Tom, Dick and Harry (not to mention the Bhajjis, Dhonis and Kapils) talking about India being a front-runner for world cup victory this year. The media is going all gaga over the 1983 world cup win and asking all and sundry from the Indian squad of 15 about the chances of winning the event. I wholeheartedly wish the ICC issues notices to all journalists suiting this description, at large in this country to stop working for a while, till the completion of the 2011 mega event. They should be given a quarter off and should be packed off to some place like Egypt for tourism. :P.

People seem totally off their minds when answering stupid questions during the conferences. For instance, Kapil Dev feels that the toss could hurt the Indian team's chances in this world cup. Can somebody give me a sleeping pill? He went on to say that Dhoni's win loss record as captain has been attractive at something like 78-48 while his toss record in the same set of matches looking like some 68-74 or some such number. How does it matter Kapil? Is the toss even something to talk about at this juncture? Are you hinting at some toss practice for Dhoni besides practicing with the bat and the gloves?

Aakash Chopra..who is a former Indian opener..for people who are caught unawares at this point, please check this out. Aakash who thinks India have the potential to lift the world cup this year. "I am an optimist and I believe India have the potential to win the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011." Yes sir. We realize you are an optimist and thanks for the information. It would add to our knowledge kit. Chopra who is an optimist hurray!!!!

India had a disastrous world cup in 2007 - they were dumped out of the tournament after the first stage where they lost to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, defeating only Bermuda in the competition. So keeping these facts in mind, shall we ask the media to shut the F up and concentrate on some other important thing like the 2G or the Adarsh or the Egyptian crisis? Or if you are bent upon cricket in general, talk about the team's injury crisis and give us updates on how Sehwag/Praveen Kumar are shaping up rather than ranting about Dhoni's confidence, Tendulkar's last chance or Kapil Dev's last night's dream.

We cricket fans are here to watch it and we shall get to know what will come out of this edition, set to start in a fortnight's time. We do NOT want any predictions, speculations or forecasts about the end result whatsoever. And lastly, before I forget, is it possible to ask the ICC to ban astrologers and soothsayers for the period starting now till the end of the world cup apart from banning the list of people/communities mentioned earlier? We are tired of statements like these -- "jupiter will be transiting in 11th house from dhoni's moon sign and india's lagna"...or some such equally stupid thing.


Thanks

5 comments:

Bhasker Kottapally said...

interesting dude.. I agree you whole heartedly !!!!

Unknown said...

Bhasker from ca?add me on bits.pradeep@gmail asap.long time man

Bhasker Kottapally said...

and one more point to add.. someone should should even ban Bollywood crap around the game...

Hari said...

Yeah da. The lesser said about the team, the better.

But we know that has as much chance of happening as Dhoni forgetting to use the phrases 'At the end of the day' or 'Well of course' in a media interview :)

I don't like predictions too much. The worst part of it all is when bloggers who predicted the triumph of victorious team X (and there are a lot of very crappy ones, don't ask me why I follow them) will rave about their predicting prowess no end.

Also I hope we have a decent bunch of commentators on the panel.

Unknown said...

@Hari : I think you are one of those looking forward to the world cup fervently.. :-) And double like on that "At the end of the day" and "Well of course" part