Humour: What if Cheteshwar Pujara was made captain of the Indian T20 side?

Pujara on his way to T20 World

In the early hours of Monday morning, the Board of Calamity for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced Cheteshwar Pujara as the man to lead India in the T20 World Cup to be held next year.

“Well, you must make a man earn his bread. This useless fellow is sitting with the squad in Sri Lanka doing nothing. I tell you, his patience, grit and concentration is not fit for Test cricket. Nor is his near perfect technique. You want to talk stats? He averages 47.11 in Test cricket. 47.11, can you believe it? We’d rather play Rohit Sharma over him, he averages 35.84 in his career. Now we’re talking.” said a clearly miffed Fundeep Patil.

“And, this is not all. Rohit has scored as many as 2 fifties and no hundreds after the first two Test matches he played. And not to forget, his two Test hundreds in his first two games came at testing conditions at home versus the mighty West Indies – the best bowling unit in the world right now. After those games, he averages 21.83 in his next 11 games. Of course he deserves his place in the side.” he added.

“Oh ho, Pujara again?” Baba Karim asks, “See, I have told you earlier as well, Pujara is not fit to be in the side. He goes to England to have a stint in county cricket to rediscover his game and does well there too. We simply cannot afford to have such hard working players in the side, he doesn’t even play the IPL, I tell you, how can he possibly make the test side without playing in the IPL?

“It doesn’t matter if he orchestrated a rare series win at home versus a poor team like Australia or scored a boisterous 153 versus Steyn and co. away from home. You simply need to be an IPL star to be able to make the Test team. And to top it all, he averages more than each and every cricketer currently playing Test cricket for India, including captain Virat Kohli. We simply cannot tolerate such performances and statistics.”

“We have two concepts - Short rope concept and long rope concept”, says Mr. Unknown Rathour. “To be eligible for a long rope you need to fulfil some conditions, like being in the Chennai Super Kings setup. That’s of paramount importance if you ask me. There are other conditions as well, like, if you perform well, you are bound to be in for a long time. And then we have inserted another clause here - if your name is Rohit Sharma, you get a long rope regardless of every other factor. Pujara, as you can see, hardly falls into any of these categories. We’re helpless, we’re bound by the law.”

“This will not be the only change, we are going to really ring the changes now,” says Singh Rajendar Sans. “Yusuf Pathan is in process of being drafted permanently into the test side. We’re even in talks with Kieron Pollard if he’d like to represent the Indian test team in his spare time. Even Subramanian Badrinath will be drafted into the T-20 side.

“These players are perfect for the aforementioned formats. We are even in talks with veteran Shib Sundar Das to coax him out of retirement one last time. No, I have no relation to Yuvraj Singh or Yograj Singh.”

When we asked about the startling developments involving Pujara to Papa Binny, he said, “Yeah, yeah. Good day for the family, we have drafted Stuart Binny into the side. He is world class, I tell you, really performing well off late. Well deserved inclusion into the side. Pujara? What Pujara? Talk about Stuart. No comments over Pujara”

Following the development, war has broken around in all parts of the world for gaining first right to sign Pujara to play in franchise based tournaments for their team.

“Who needs AB de Villiers or Chris Gayle when we have Pujara, the most gritty batsmen the world has seen? He will surely go a long way in helping us achieve our objectives.” says Mr. Stanford, owner of “just-another-franchise”.

Meanwhile, as expected, Yorkshire and Derbyshire have cancelled their county contracts with Pujara, citing him to be ‘unfit for the toils of Test cricket’ and have signed Shahid Afridi instead who they hailed to be a ‘Test cricket’ legend.

All this, in just another day of the Cricket Zoo prevalent in the Southern part of Asia.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction written with a humourous intent, and is not to be taken seriously.