Satire: 15 ways India can win matches overseas

MS Dhoni has had great luck with tosses recently

It’s tough to say what’s worse, Team India’s overseas performances or Rahul Gandhi’s answers to Arnab. Nevertheless, the thing that’s similar to both Team India and Rahul Gandhi, both continue to make money. India have performed miserably outside India, losing 4-0 to England, 4-0 to Australia, 1-0 to South Africa and a similar story in New Zealand.

MS Dhoni, tipped to be India’s best captain ever, has a captaincy record worse than Rohit Sharma‘s overseas batting records. With many overseas tours lined up, what can India do to win matches? Here are a few tips to the cash-rich BCCI and its boys.

1. All overseas matches should be played in India henceforth. The kind of money the other cricket boards can make out of this, they won’t mind this for sure.

2. The team that wins the toss, wins the match as well. Going by Dhoni’s luck, this isn’t a bad choice.

3. The BCCI should push the ICC to create a new rule where the home team cannot bowl short balls to visiting teams.

4. Visiting teams can have 15 fielders on the field. The Indian bowlers desperately need that.

5. Three strikes, you’re out. The Indian batsmen are the ones who will least get affected by this. They are so bad, they can’t leave three balls in a row. They’ll either edge one or find another way to get out.

6. N Srinivasan should have cricket enthusiasts all around the world. (Slyly placing this somewhere in the middle of the article. You don’t want to piss off N Srinivasan, do you?)

7. Develop test tube swing bowlers in the lab. The knack should be imbibed in the DNA itself. Otherwise, there’s no real hope.

8. Allow cricketers to play Test Cricket and ODIs with their IPL jerseys. Rohit Sharma would love this.

9. The visiting captain should get to decide how much grass should be left on the wicket and the home captain will see how much grass he would want on the wicket before offering the final decision to the visiting captain. Works both ways for Team India.

10. Count all the matches that a die-hard Indian cricket fan gets in his dream. Of course, we’ll have better results that way.

11. A player should retire his innings as soon as he scores a hundred. Indian cricketers are not fans of big hundreds anyway.

12. Commentators get to decide when a team has to declare. #AskRavi and all that.

13. Have Indian umpires officiating for every match.

14. Call cricket a ‘reality show’ and decide the winners through SMS votes.

15. Have two teams representing India. Get them to play against each other outside India. At the end of the day, India is the real winner.