Satire: India to double bluff England with seamer friendly wickets

The Indian cricketers and fans haven’t forgotten the 4-0 drubbing that their team received in England last year. But much has changed since then. England are no more the No.1 side in Tests. The legends – Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman – have retired. Kevin Pietersen’s text message incident landed him in trouble for a brief moment but took a Bollywood movie-like turn, when Andrew Strauss retired and the ECB decided to patch up with KP in the blink of an eye. Yuvraj Singh fought cancer and is all set to stake a claim in the test squad too. Among the things that have remained the same, Sachin Tendulkar is still playing cricket and on a totally different note, everybody believes the BCCI will prepare dust bowls and placid wickets with very little grass or none whatsoever, to welcome England.

Raghu and Rajiv – the bald men from MTV Roadies were recently appointed for a 1 week job with the BCCI where the duo convinced the governing body to prepare Perth-like seamer friendly tracks instead of spin-friendly wickets. Reverse Psychology is said to have been the new strategy employed against touring nations. It goes without saying that England are pretty bad against spin bowling and going by the quality of pace bowlers we have, this secret decision by the BCCI seems baffling.

V Jayadevan, statistician turned chemist, has come up with a chemical called ‘Jumble’ that would bring out weird chemical reactions among the soil particles which would help the bowlers like Irfan Pathan and Vinay Kumar cross the 160kph mark. The chemical is named after India’s legendary bowler, leg spinner to the world and fellow pace bowler to his teammates – Anil Kumble. Jumbo could bowl quicker than the likes of Irfan Pathan and extracted more bounce from the wicket than even Zaheer or Srinath. Jayadevan’s dedication and willingness to offer more to the game of ‘cricket’ lured him to the chemical laboratories after the ICC discarded his rain rule that challenged the Duckworth Lewis method.

While the English team is given dirt bowls for their practice games and at the nets on request, to concentrate more on turn and variable bounce, not even remotely aware that a double bluff is coming their way, the Indian batsmen are wondering how they would tackle the English pace bowling, given the seamer friendly conditions. If Irfan can bowl at 160kph, what can the likes of Finn do? Jayadevan has a solution to that.

The chemical works in such a way that the wicket will be a batting beauty on Day 1 and 2 but completely opposite on Day 3 and 4 where Irfan Pathan and Vinay Kumar will be able to bowl faster than they ever did. For this plan to work, India should just win the toss and bat first. Or, spray the chemical two days prior to the Test match and bowl first. The bottom-line is, India need to win the toss. Well, of course, the last time Dhoni won a toss, was perhaps in the Medieval period. Whether the plan will work or not, whether it will be Tendulkar’s last series, whether or not Kevin Pietersen sends text messages to his friends in India, whether Dhoni will call back Ian Bell after yet another run out, whether both captains will shake hands and call it a draw – only time will tell.