Satire: India - Sri Lanka to start their own ‘Ashes’

Joined at the hips

The Board of Control for Cricket in India and Sri Lanka Cricket have together come up with a path-breaking decision to destroy Test cricket as early as possible so that the Indian Premier League can take over and dominate the world of cricket, much like the English Premier League.

The two boards met at the Taj, Mumbai and the discussions went overtime, resulting in the hotel authorities slapping a 40% fine. Rumour has it that MS Dhoni was also a part of the meeting. If that’s true, it pretty much explains why the meeting didn’t end at the stipulated time.

There was a delay early on before the meeting took off, as Jagmohan Dalmiya and N Srinivasan were seen fighting for the seat at the head of the table. Later on, they took a strategy break and to avoid further delays, they removed the chair and brought in a couch where two people could sit.

The outcome of the meeting was that India and Sri Lanka will start a new cult version of The Ashes. The significance of the series dates back to the Ramayan days, where a monkey (not the one Harbhajan Singh referred to during the Sydney gate) flew to Sri Lanka and burnt the whole island and left behind the ‘ashes’. The essence of the series is to decide to whom the ‘ashes’ really belongs.

To avoid unnecessary clashes with the ECB and the ICC, the two boards decided to call it ‘The Real Ashes’, instead of ‘The Ashes’. The two boards have also requested the ICC to try out a different approach in the DRS during the series, where the third umpire tosses a coin and the player who reviewed can pick either ‘head’ or ‘tail’. Depending on whether he calls it right or not, the decision will be made. MS Dhoni was apparently livid with this decision of the BCCI and threatened to quit as India Cements vice president and just work as a ‘cement enthusiast’ henceforth.

The Real Ashes will be a seven Test series, three of which will be played in Sri Lanka, three in India and the final Test will be played in the sea, on a mammoth ship that will be built by the BCCI. The ship will have a cricket stadium that has a capacity to seat 200 people, 50 more than the number of people who will be interested in watching an India – Sri Lanka match.

Mahela Jayawardene has already added MS Dhoni to his ‘close friends’ list on Facebook and the two spend more time together than they spend with their wives, thanks to the number of times the two nations face off against each other.

The BCCI has also requested Sri Lanka to convince Lasith Malinga to start playing Test cricket again so that MS Dhoni and Virat Kohli can entertain the crowd and help the two boards earn some revenue through television and ticket sales at the venue.

‘Ram’ Gopal Varma, VVS ‘Laxman’ and ‘Hanuman’ Vihari will be seen promoting the series on Doordarshan. Poonam Pandey also tweeted saying she will start wearing sarees like Sita to support the new initiative. After all, the Mayans weren’t really wrong. The world is about to end pretty soon.