And now for something completely different.
Who will win the world cup?
No, not Monty Python.
Unfortunately.
Unless you were in Mars the past month, or are Rip Van Winkle just getting up from your 20 year slumber, you must know that there is a cricket tournament happening right now. No. Not the All-India world class super fantastic gully cricket championship. The Cricket World cup. Just in case you were in Mars or are Rip van Winkle, there is a World cup happening and the final will be held in Mumbai tomorrow (Mr. Winkle, do not look perplexed. In the past 20 years, Bombay has been renamed Mumbai).
So what of this final then? Who will win? If you ask Ravi Shastri, he will say, ‘In the end, cricket is the winner’. But we will not ask Mr.Shastri, will we? Well, regardless of whether we ask him, he is bound to give an opinion and this will be so loud that you can’t but help hearing it. Oh! And this is without the mic in his hand. Tomorrow, he will have a mic, though. God help you all!
Right so who will win? My dear friend! Predicting finals is like writing a simile. It might be like this or it might be like that. But it will definitely be liked. Such Siddhuisms will be common place tomorrow. Mr. Navjot Singh Sidhu, Member of Parliament and the resident idiot of the ESPN commentary team is bound to make loud, stupid and obnoxious comments and generally suffocate everyone just by his presence. Rumor has it that the other panelists demand a special component in their salary which goes by the name ‘proximity to Siddhu’. The amount of money received is inversely proportional to the distance between the panelist and Mr.Sidhu. ‘Well what can I say, Harsha?…’ and it is at this point that Mr.Bhogle misses the trick each time by not saying, ‘Nothing at all, Sherry. Nothing at all. If possible.’
We still haven’t gotten down to what will happen in the game tomorrow. Well, one of two things could happen. India could win. Or Pakistan could win. Wait. That was for the previous game. Mr. Gavaskar will reach epic orgasmic highs (without alcohol) when Sachin bats. When the ball hits the middle of the bat, he will jump from his seat. When the ball hits the edge, he will proclaim that it was intentional and of course, when Sachin gets out it will be because of the curse of the rain gods who were supposed to show up the ball before he got out. There will, of course, not be a cloud in the sky. Idol worship knows no bounds with Mr. Gavaskar. In between, Sanjay Manjarekar will slip in his pearls of wisdom with the occasional sly ‘I was better than Sachin. He only scored more runs than me but I was better’. Mr. Manjarekar is not one to hold grudges but envy is quite a strong point. Rameez Raja will say that Shahid Afridi will be the man of the tournament in an otherwise women-only tournament and that W.Riaz is the new W.Akram, by virtue of having ‘W’ as his initial. And of course, Umar Akmal will be a keen runner between the wickets.
Who will win? If you believe Ian Chappell, then there is a good chance that the Aussies will appear in the final in the place of either India or Sri Lanka because Alan Border was a brilliant captain and the world cup final without Australia is no world cup final at all. In fact, the Australian world cup final is scheduled to start at exactly 2:30 IST tomorrow and will be played between Ponting’s step-down captains XI and Michael Clarke’s yet-to-be-named captains XI. Tom Moody will just bore the hell out of you with his incessant droning. The English boys will of course prove once again that their commentating is leaps and bounds above their cricket. Rumor has it that the next generation of English cricketers are being given commentary training rather than cricket coaching. The day will not be far off when we see Michael Smith, former international Commentator, now playing for Sussex.
This has indeed come too far. Who will win? Who will win? Will it be Sachin? Will it be India? Will it be Sri Lanka? Or perhaps Kenya will spring a surprise. It could well happen. Cricinfo will will. No doubt. The amount of traffic that the site will see will be second only to the live feed that will anticipate Poonam Pandey’s histrionics.
Right so I will finally stick my neck out and tell you who will win. Before I do that, I must tell you something about we as a people. We Indians, by nature have always been benevolent people. We believe in the essential goodness of mankind. We follow the principle of Mahatma Gandhi, and turn the other cheek.
In that vein, this will happen. We, as benevolent Indians, will let Sri Lanka win.
Only the toss.
The cup is ours.
Ha!