With the Indian team drawing flak from former players, commentators, pundits and armchair twitter pundits alike, support has come in from unexpected quarters. Captains of industry have lauded the Indian team’s performance and have cited it as a major reason for the increase in productivity of employees.
‘We have noticed a remarkable increase in the productivity levels of the employees over the past fortnight. Every time India plats a series down under, we find a lot of cases of employees turning up for work only post lunch time’, said a manager of a leading IT company.
‘In the past, we have had cases of Melbourne morning sickness, boxing day bugs and Sydney sinusitis. All of these health conditions, of course, miraculously vanished after lunch time but since we trust our employees to the hilt, we did not think it was linked to the cricket. In fact, we have even had reported cases of bachelors’ spouses falling violently ill. One employee suffered the tragic loss of several relatives on five consecutive days and one person’s grandfather even died four days in a row. It was most torturous. Bless his soul’
He continued, ‘this time, however, the appalling performance of the Indian team has led to employees coming to the office on time and in many cases, well in time. We have found people coming in at 5 A.M to avoid switching on the television only to see the score and get depressed. Further, we have found that the number of people logging on to websites to check the score during office hours has reduced drastically. Even water cooler conversations about cricket are barely heard. I would like to express my heart-felt thanks to the Indian cricket team.’
Support has also come in from a lot of Indian fans who have traveled to Australia to watch the cricket. ‘Thanks to the woeful performance of the team, I have been able to explore much more of Melbourne and Sydney. I thought I would be hard pressed for time between the first two tests but the team duly obliged by finishing up the first test in three days and a half,’ said one fan. ‘ My wife, who was constantly complaining about me putting cricket ahead of her, was most thankful to the team for we got so much more time to go sight-seeing and shopping ’, quipped another.
A young fan said, ‘I thought that test cricket was going to bore me out of my wits but thankfully, I now have so much more time to watch the Australian IPL. I won’t lie, I love watching Sachin and Dravid bat and even my coach sir asks me to observe their batting closely. (Sir, if you are reading this, I did study their batting very closely but I think Zaheer is better; he at least hits sixes) But by getting to watch Gayle and McCullum and Afridi and Hayden, I got a lot more entertainment than I bargained for. Thank you, India! Jai Ho!’
Buoyed by this unexpected level of support, team India is now hoping to continue its excellent showing by wrapping up tests quickly. Just Well-In-Time match completion methods are now being offered as electives in the National Cricket Academy. The team is also reportedly working on publications like middle disorder and No joy in the morning and a blockbuster movie How to lose a test in three days.