Trivia
By Venkatesh Raghavan
It was early morning when I finished my walk and entered the Irani restaurant for a bite. I was greeted by Amir who dropped his spectacles as he looked up from the newspaper. Amir ordered plum cakes for both of us and cups of green tea. “What do you think about the 10-wicket defeat meted out to us by Pakistan in the T20 World Cup?” he queried. I smiled, saying, “Can’t make much out of it.”
Our conversation went somewhat like this.
Amir: I strongly feel that the Indian team was playing way below par to its ability. It was a very disappointing result.
Me: There is nothing surprising about it Amir. It’s actually the Indian television manufacturers who had come up with a conspiracy to give an impetus to their ebbing domestic market.
Amir: What on earth has the television industry to do with this match? You make no sense.
Me: Our television manufacturers learnt from their Pakistani counterparts that a record number of television sets get broken when Pakistan loses to India in any World Cup match. The manufacturers came together and decided that India being a much larger country, there will be much more number of sets that get broken if the Indian team loses. That will imply a surge in sales figures of television sets and serve as a shot-in-the-arm for the recession affected industry.
Amir: Your explanation is specious to be most charitable about it. Can’t you think up something more convincing for the disastrous outcome of the match?
Me: See Amir, our government may well be able to use this opportunity to complain to the UN that the Pakistan cricket team are a bunch of terrorists. They are butchering our cricketers.
Amir: Do you recall in the post-mid eighties phase, our openers Sunny Gavaskar and Krish Srikanth used to cross well past the 100 run mark in the first ten overs. Would you classify them too as cricket terrorists?
Me: You don’t get it right Amir. Krishnamachari Srikkanth and Sunil Gavaskar never had any partnership that resulted in a 10-wicket victory. The only time India had this margin of win in an ODI tournament was when playing against East Africa in the first World Cup. You are well aware that East Africa never had any pretence of being even a local club side.
Amir: Do you mean to say, being branded a cricketing terror, you are solely guided by the margin of victory?
Me: There’s nothing wrong in drawing that conclusion. However, what I wanted to stress on is that it would suit us well to club any Pakistani sports team, be it hockey or cricket, get the “terror-branding” in the event they trounce or trash India in any (sporting) encounter.
Amir: I fail to understand how a sporting encounter can translate into such a grim interpretation.
Me: On the lighter side, Amir, in the Euro soccer league, Germany was playing against Italy in the semi-finals. My friend commented “The Axis powers are playing against one another.”
