“Leena Kapoor, a very talented player, will replace VVS Laxman” said a BCCI spokesman in Mumbai.

“Leena is a very special talent and a very determined player who achieves everything she sets her eyes on, these days she has set her eyes on a posh bunglow in Mumbai and I am sure she’ll get it, as it is media is helping her.” said N.Srinivasan (President of Tamil Nadu Golf Federation, All India Chess Federation, Tamil Nadu Cricket Associal and BCCI as well) in a telephonic conversation with our correspondent. Mr. Srinivasan certainly knows a lot about cricket as he has played 413 first class matches in his Bunglow’s backyard since childhood.

Leena Kapoor’s selection does come as a surprise, because earlier there were reports of Veena Malik being considered as VVS Laxman’s replacement. Veena and VVS had many similarities, “Veena’s name also started with the letter ‘V’, Veena also had 2 ‘E’s in her name just like ‘Vengipurapu Venkata Sai Laxman’ but we preferred Leena because VVS was known more popularly as ‘Laxman’, which starts with ‘L’ and Leena’s name also starts with an ‘L’. Moreover her name also has double ‘E’s, that’s why we have chosen her” said Mr. Srinivasan a B.Sc(tech) from Alagappa College of Technology, who has made BCCI into a multi-million dollar ‘business entity’.

Sources close to VVS, from Hyderabad Cricket Association say Leena won’t make for a good replacement because VVS’s name doesn’t have two ‘E’s, infact it just has a single ‘E’.

In an Email, they confirmed VVS’s name’s real spelling as ‘Vangipurapu Venkata Sai Laxman’.

VVS Laxman was unavailable for a comment, as he went to watch ‘Ek Thha Tiger’ with Sachin who skipped his nets session specially for the movie.

VVS’s childhood friends refused to comment, with just one of them saying “VVS never told us his full name, It was only when he became a cricketer we got to know through TV that his name is longer than Rohit Sharma’s best innings. Once I even gave him a ‘mum swear’ to tell me his full name correctly, but he still refused (to tell me).”

Meanwhile, Leena Kapoor is being considered as the apt choice, as reports prove that, she is  also a very friendly player and has been in news for her ‘friendship’ with an International umpire. It is said that Leena Kapoor and her friend played back to back  ‘Test macthes’ at different venues and on different surfaces.

“They would always use new surfaces to play in order to make Leena gain experience and make her comfortable to bat in different conditions and positions” said Leena’s manager. She has also played T20s with her umpire friend. A source confirmed “She has, I mean she is a great asset as she is an expert at playing shorter and faster innings as well as slower and longer innings. She is also quite good at shouting, that’ll make her good at appealing.”

Leena was unavailable for the reaction as she was busy playing a T20 with her friend at an undisclosed venue.

Practising hard on the spot !

This is a satire article and intended for fun.

Devendro Gogoi, 21, a fourth semester Engineering student created a page on facebook ‘Rohit Sharma fan page’ on the eve of Independence Day of India and invited all his friends to join the page. Interestingly, 13 people accepted the invitation and joined the ‘fan’ page. 9 out of these 13 fans(more than the national sex-ratio) are said to be girls, 3 of them look like Priyanka Chopra and 2 of them resemble Kristen Stewart. 2 other fans resemble Katrina Kaif and Emma Watson while the remaining 2 looked like commoners. Police issued a statement saying, they’ve sent various teams to look out for these 13 people as well.

On being asked about the reason for the man’s arrest, the police said, they had ‘special orders’.

Whose ‘orders’ were these and why were these orders given, are just a few of the many questions doing rounds in Tinsukia right now.

It is being speculated that central home ministry could be behind these orders.

Supposedly, Rohit Sharma is from Mumbai and there have been reports of alleged violence by mumbaikars against the assamese natives in Mumbai. But this doesn’t justify the man’s arrest.

Bangladesh cricket board, the chief minister ofWest Bengal or Poonam Pandey could also be behind the man’s arrest.

One of the theories also blame ISI. As ‘Rohit Sharma fan page’ posed a serious threat to another similar fan page of a legendary Pakistani cricketer ‘Kamran Akmal’. The reports say, ISI didn’t have any problem with the ‘Rohit Sharma fan Page’ until it had not more than ‘12’ likes, but as soon as the number of likes increased to ‘13’ equalling the number of likes on ‘Kamran Akmal fan page’, ISI started panicking and started sending bulk messages to the Assamese natives living in Mumbai(hometown of Rohit Sharma) and the relatives of Assamese living in Mumbai. It is said that those messages raised some serious questions about the security of Assam natives living in Mumbai. One of the SMSes sent to a 41 year old Dispur resident, reads -

 “Plz it’s a request to everyone to call their sons, daughters and brothers from Mumbai.

Call them soon, as some people are targeting Assamese people in Mumbai. Ask your relatives to leave Mumbai ASAP and not to talk to mumbaikars as they might attack anytime.

Ask them to leave Mumbai, its for their own good.

Also, ask your sons and brothers not to like any Mumbai’s sportsmen’s facebook pages because that’ll pose a threat to their security.”

The North-East Indians panicked after reading such messages and fleed towards Guwahati(Assam) overnight.

Central Home-ministry took the SMSes seriously and prepared a list of all the admins of various Mumbai’s sportsmen’s fan pages on facebook.

Sachin Tendulkar’s fan page had ‘4.6 million’ likes hence the home ministry took him more as a national sportsmen and not just a Mumbaikar. Sunil Gavaskar’s fan page wasn’t taken seriously because he retired long time back. Ajit Agarkar’s fan page hasn’t had an increase in the number of fans since the summer of 2008 and it still stands at 351( 312 of these are said to be his relatives).

Rohit Sharma’s fan page was a newly made page and the Home ministry couldn’t help but think- ‘Why on earth would somebody be a fan of Rohit Sharma?’. It is also said that in 2009 the then President, Pratibha Patil invited Rohit Sharma to play a T20 game with her in the ‘mughal gardens’ of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Although Rohit Sharma scored his career best of 5 runs(73 balls) against the pace attack of Pratibha Patil, he ended up on the losing side. Sushil Kumar Shinde (Home minister) was  keeping wickets in that T20 match, and it is reported that after the match he thought that a ‘Rohit Sharma fan page’ would always cease to exist.

Hence, this new ‘Rohit Sharma fan page’ looked more like a result of some conspiracy to the central Home-ministry and they gave orders to get the admin arrested.(This is just a speculation, police hasn’t issued any official statement about the reason behind the man’s arrest).

Devendro Gogoi(the arrested man) is also said to have a Rohit Sharma’s portrait, tattooed on his right thigh. ‘It’s a very expensive tattoo’, a source confirmed. It surely is going to cost Devendro a lot now!

The question still stands, ‘What made Devendro a fan of Rohit Sharma?’

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‘VVS Laxman might retire from Test cricket after the end of two match test series against New Zealand’  The Hindu has reported.

What’s your first reaction after reading this? Are you elated? Overjoyed? Or it doesn’t really bother you, because according to you ‘this Hyderabadi’ wasn’t doing anything substantial in the team? Fair enough, as he only has one century to his credit and averages just 36.84 per innings in 8 test  matches that he has played during the last year . That gives all of us a reason to be happy with the ‘tentative’ retirement.

Now, how about this fact? The Indian test team has lost 5 test matches, drawn 1 and won just 2 test matches that Laxman has featured in during the last 12 months. A win % of just 25 and  a whopping 62.5 loss %( It should’ve been the other way round, right?).

Ofcourse, that gives us another good reason to have a ‘positive’ outlook towards Laxman’s ‘tentative’ retirement as that’ll make way for younger and more capable players. Players like Kohli, Sharma(ofcourse Rohit) and Pujara.

Let’s talk about the younger brigade and their performance in the test arena during the last 12 months. Rohit Sharma didn’t get to play any test match and same was the case with Cheteshwar Pujara. That leaves us with Mr. ‘Oh sooo cool’ Kohli, who featured in 5 test matches of which India lost 4, drew just 1 and won a big goose egg.

Who are/have been the more reliable players for the Indian test team lately? Without doubt the Little Master, Mr. Captain, the Nawab of Najafgarh, the Retired-Wall and Gautam Gambhir (can’t think of a pseudonym for him. Does he have one?).

In the 2 test matches that India have won over the last 12 months, SRT averages 40.33 (below par), KKR skipper averages 42.66 (somewhat ok), Viru averages 49.33 (decent), Dravid averages 68.00 (that’s why they called him ‘The Wall’), Dhoni averages 72.00 (woah!) and our tragic hero, the man whose retirement is much sought after, Mr. Very Very Special Laxman averages a whopping 235.00 with a best inning of 176. Need I say more?

It is being said that the ‘Very Very Special’ batsman is emotionally hurt by the continuous onslaught on him by the media.

Why does the TRP-hungry electronic media have to target the man who has played the most important role, yes I repeat ‘the most important role’, with the bat in the recent wins for India in the test arena? Infact, not just the recent test match wins, if we take a look at the batsmen who have scored the most number of runs for India in the matches won since 25 June 1932(the first official test match that India played against England at Lord’s), Laxman stands tall at the 3^rd spot with 3410 runs. Ofcourse, Tendulkar and Dravid are 1 and 2, but both of them have played many more test matches than our ‘Tragic Hero’. Supposedly, the second best Indian batsman of all time, Mr. Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, has just scored 1671 runs in winning causes for India.

Some of you must be wondering ‘statistics don’t make anybody great’, but I would say-

Why is Tendulkar regarded a ‘great’ of the game? Because, he scored the most number of runs and has the most number of centuries.

Why is Bradman a legend? Because, his batting average is whopping, its surreal to say the least.

Why are Warne and Murali considered the magical spinners? Because, they have the most number of wickets.

What made West Indies the greatest team of all time during 60s, 70s and 80s?  Their win percentage.

Why is Australian never written off in ODIs? Because, they’ve won 4 world cups, twice as many as the second best.

 Hence, statistics and statistics alone make any player a great. The more wickets or the more runs a cricketer has, the greater he is. The more wins a team has, the greater it is.

Hence, the more runs a batsman scores in a winning cause, the greater he is. VVS Laxman is an all-time great who fell prey to the TRP-hungry electronic-media, who finds an easy target in him and who doesn’t have the guts to utter a word about SRT.

No doubt SRT is a great of the game, Sunil Gavaskar is a great of the game, Dravid is a great of the game but Laxman is no less a great, whose greatness lies in the zest for making his team win and making his team strive for GREATNESS!

 Then what makes VVS, a tragic hero?

As someone rightly said, “A tragic hero is one that has one major flaw and the audience usually feels pity, sympathy, empathy, and compassion.”

Laxman’s one and only flaw was not being a ‘star player’ for the masses, which made him vulnerable to the onslaught of the media and hence made him ‘just another’ test player whose retirement would help the cricket-fanatics quench their thirst for a win at the test arena.

I am afraid his retirement might make them thirstier!