Satire: BCCI considers naming trophy after Tendulkar to get him to finally retire

Disclaimer: This is a satire article and is meant to be taken humorously.

The Tendulkar-Afridi trophy is clearly not a good idea

The Board of Control for Cricket in India, fondly called the BCCI, is mooting naming a trophy after former legend Sachin Tendulkar in order to encourage him to step down from the game.

“Machan… We’ve given up all hope. We’ve tried everything to hint to him that it’s time for him to hang up his boots. We sent him a cake last April 24 with huge ’39′ candles, we bought him a retirement fund, heck, we even sent him clippings for ‘job openings for ex-international cricketers’. How much more of a hint can we give machan?!”, thundered N Srinivasan, bigwig at the BCCI. “If Sachin retires, I’ll try to get him to play for CSK”, he signed off with a rather creepy wink.

“So now, we decided to do the slyest thing. We hired a marketing graduate from a leading business school, and he cracked the insight that all people who have trophies named after them are – you guessed it – retired! By corollary, it means that all retired people have trophies named… Oh wait.”, he stumbled, checking his Blackberry for notes.

“So basically what we’re saying is, if we name a trophy after him, he might finally take a hint. After all, no cricketer would ever play in a tournament that had his surname, right?!”, he said, effectively killing any hopes that Rohan Gavaskar exercised of making a comeback to the Indian team.

Clearly not very good at taking hints, Tendulkar has laboured away for one more year while the selectors are busy ordering another cake…

Top selectors and BCCI self-appointed experts are in agreement. Said one gent from the BCCI: “This is a stroke of genius indeed. We initially thought we’d play a benefit match for Sachin, but then, realising how much we’d lose in revenue and spectator interest after he retires, WE would be the ones needing the benefit. Hehe.”

The trouble now, of course, is finding a suitable foreign-country counterpart to co-name the trophy. “It’s quite annoying, really”, said a copywriter at the BCCI.

Since there’s already a trophy for India-Australia, so that’s ruled out. “Thank goodness”, said a former match referee. “Can you imagine what those Sachin maniacs would have done if we’d named it the Tendulkar-Ponting trophy? Shudder!”

“See, the trouble is finding a contemporary from another country who is as popular. India-Pakistan could be called Tendulkar-Afridi trophy – the only problem is, one doesn’t know how many times per year Afridi is going to retire,” opined one fellow from the BCCI.

“We thought of Tendulkar-Lara trophy, but then that itself will open up a can of worms. There will be debates about who the better batsman was, and Sunil Gavaskar will go on and on about Tendulkar. In general, anything that gets Sunny to talk more should be nipped in the bud then and there,” said a co-commentator who wished to be unnamed for the sake of his contract.

Tendulkar’s mad legion of fans have mixed feelings. Some feel that it’s an honour for the legend to be immortalized with a trophy, others lament his potential ouster from the game. Some, however, remain optimistic that he can lend his name to a trophy AND play. “How epic would that be? Tendulkar lifting the Tendulkar-Kallis cup! Hahahaha!”, said a gent who described himself as ‘A hardcore Sachinologist’, before going off to get a ticking counter of Sachin’s runs tattooed on his back.

“Heh, I wonder when they’ll name a trophy after me”, said Sir Ravindra Jadeja, of whom we cannot make jokes anymore since he performed well. Vacancies are open for a new cricketer to make fun of (bring back Sreesanth).

Disclaimer: This is a satire article and is meant to be taken humorously.