I am Rajiv, Praful, Sharad, Shashi, Lalit, Erle Stanley Gardner, Parameshwaran and Bob Mali. In cricketing circles, I’m also known as Mr Quickfix. With nine Blackberrys to match my aliases and a comb in my backpocket, I’ve been raking it in big time in the IPL. I even arranged the marriage between Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik. I was at Hobart on the day they met. Actually, I was the one who sent flowers on Shoaib’s behalf to Sania. For he’s the kind of guy who says only fools send ‘phool’ and thinks it’s funny in that simple Sialkot style. Anyway, matchmaking is only a side business. My core competence is making money on and off the cricket field. And in this my cellphones come in handy. For instance, when I speak to Mr Pawar I use the handset with the user ID ‘Sharad’. This always confuses the IBwallahs listening in. In fact, one of them filed a ‘tapping report’ in which he referred to Sharadbhai speaking to himself. To quote: “Perhaps one phone was in his left ear and the other in his right. Very clearly, Sharad was speaking to Sharad.” This has set many people in the home ministry thinking and one young enterprising bureaucrat has even written a paper on ‘Why People Talk To Themselves’ based on a 1980 article of the same title by Jeffry Andersen, MD, and published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Association.
But coming back to my core competence, I must admit I have a way with cricketers. All I do is go near the dugout and pass them a matchbox. In it I spell out instructions and the codes that will give them access to funds at the Blossom village branch of the Cayman National Bank. I even have the instructions. Like the other day I gave a wicketkeeper this message, ‘catches win matchis’. He read my message and carefully kept the matchbox in his pocket, walked to the middle and earnestly dropped several sitters. So, thanks to him, I and my syndicate made a few millions. By the way, among us punters, we don’t refer to cricket as cricket. The codeword we use is insect. And players are referred to as insecters. Incidentally, all this has misled several investigators into thinking that bets are placed on the flightpaths of moths who hover in the grounds during the D/N matches.
So, what do I make of the entire Lalit Modi controversy? Well, I would say it was needless. Indeed, if you ask me, it’s high time that match-fixing and betting is legalised in this country. In fact, there should be an entire ministry created for it. We can then take IPL to every nukkad and corner of the country. Only then will cricket become an equal opportunity game, when people in the villages and small towns will get to place bets and fix matches. That will be the day when cricket will truly become a religion. And this religion the opiate (or coke) of the masses. Meanwhile, I have got a call on my ‘Lalit’ phone. It must be the IPL commissioner. Let me sign off and let ‘Lalit’ speak to Lalit.
(As imagined by Ajith Pillai)
