Spare the Indian Cricket team

The Indian cricket team has been at the receiving end for the past few days after its unceremonious exit from the ICC World Cup. If you had watched Star News (No sane English speaking person would watch it, but there was some other program on NDTV at that time) over the past few days, the way they were bashing the cricketers made you feel sorry for them. Is this outcry justified ?

Yes, they performed badly. But, they are human, not the demigods which we Indian cricket fans perceive them to be. They too have their bad days and it was one such day which led them to the defeat against Bangladesh.

Everyone wants their share of criticism and uses their creative minds to bash the Indian team. Anand Ramachandran says that the Indian Cricket team has applied for Irish citizenship so that they can continue to play in the Super-8 as part of the Irish team. There are even some super-smart people who file cases against the Indian cricket team coach Greg Chappell, BCCI President Sharad Pawar and Kiran More, blaming them for the ouster of the Indian cricket team from the World Cup. Some people, with the support of political parties, burn the posters and effigies of our cricketers and also chant anti "ruling-government" slogans randomly during this act. There is also this mail going around with photos of the indian cricketers in their new jobs (The dhoni one with the monkey was cool!)

But, are the Indian cricketers really responsible for this loss? People are hasty in making conclusions about the inabilities of our cricketers. Not enough analysis is done by the media before making outrageous statements about the form of our team.

So, the real reasons as to why india is out of the world cup are:

• Bermuda played badly in their match against Bangladesh. Their batting was horrible. The two dropped catches proved too costly for them and for India.
• Allison Leverock, the mother of Dwayne Leverock for having fed him so much food over the past few years. If only his mother had kept him on a diet, he would have been a few dozen kilos lighter and would have held more catches to help bermuda win against bangladesh.
• The chefs of the hotel where Bangladesh stayed. Their cooking was so bad that the Bangaldeshis skipped their dinner the night before their match with India. If only they had had their dinner, a few of them might have been down with food poisoning.
• The lack of good barbers in Port of Spain. Dhoni had commented that his hair had grown a little too long to manage and this had affected his game in the warm-up matches. So, Dhoni had planned to have a haircut in Port of Spain before the match against Bangladesh. But, all the barbers there only specialised in making curls out of the existing hair and none had ever heard of a haircut!
• Varuna, Zeus and Hobal, the rain gods for shedding their tears intermittently and not continuously during the bermuda bangladesh match. If only they had cried continuously, the bermuda cricketers might have known that the match was going to be reduced and slogged, rather than play like a test match.

What people also don't see is the benefit we get from the loss

• Poster makers have said that their profits have soared to never-seen-before levels after india's exit from the world cup. People are now buying posters of indian cricketers and burning them. More posters are being sold now compared to when india was performing well and winning matches
• Students will perform better in the board exams happening throughout the country now. Of course, under the assumption that it doesn't get postponed or cancelled because of protests or bandhs by political parties.
• Tamilians will not be killed in Karnataka. This is because, in tamil nadu, people will not watch matches and hence will have their TVs turned off, thus saving electricity in the state. Hence the state doesn't need more water in the Cauvery river to feed its hydro-electric projects.
• The Ad industry will have many openings, now that the cricketers will be kicked out of the ad campaigns.

So, ladies and gentlemen, bearded hosts of STAR news, 10-rupee an hour poster burners of political parties, don't blame the Indian cricketers for this loss. They were just playing their natural game. It was the others who weren't doing so, resulting in the indians' loss.

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