Satire Saturday | What are cricket fans doing in quarantine

So the day I first read about the coronavirus I was really pissed that they named it after my favourite beer. When I went to work I was shocked to see all colleagues using sanitizers. Suddenly, I wasn’t a snob anymore and my sanitizer finally found friends. Anyway, the closed doors game between Australia and New Zealand game was on and it still hadn’t dawned on me that the godforsaken pandemic would take away the most precious part of my life- cricket. 

Now that the history part is done, let’s return to my story, which is basically every cricket fan’s story. I returned to my flat and the next few days were nothing but readjusting to a work from home lifestyle. My spiritual coach and I were hanging out more than ever, social distancing from everyone else. 

He took me out to a land unknown, but I thought maybe I haven’t seen the outside in 10 days. He held my shoulder and said, “You’re not alone in this, I’m going to show you that.” We walked for about thirty minutes to finally find a deserted nightclub. I found four people sitting there who looked like my teammates but still different.

“They’re cricket fans like you, go talk to them,” said my spiritual coach. 

So here’s what I learned about each of these people. All of them introverts, so I’m not naming anyone here. 

Fan 1:  Oh, well. It’s me. I told them how I could neither find my cricket video games, my cricket diary, and my cricket books nor my will to live. 

Now, I turned, to Fan 3 who is a pure fanboy but is suddenly interested in cricket history. “Yeah, man, I only care if India wins. Rest of it is just bullcrap. I mean if that goodman Martin Guptill hadn’t run out MS Dhoni, we would’ve definitely won the World Cup. I’m so glad New Zealand lost in the final. But I’m trying to learn more about the history you know. Like I watched the MS Dhoni movie and now I’m reading Neville Cardus. Experts say Cardus is mostly fiction, but who cares? I’m learning, right?”

One of the fans seemed pretty distracted and mostly into his laptop. So, anyway, I got to learn that Fan 4 is giving online classes on how to pronounce Labuschagne to Indian fans. He bangs the desk and screams, “It’s impossible! They just don’t learn do they?” All of us in the room, collectively, had to pronounce “Labush-KHAG-knee” to calm the guy down. 

Now, Fan 5 has a rather interesting story to tell. He’s sitting in his cricketing gear, face almost invisible in the dim light. He told us that he has been playing cricket with shady people in a ghetto during weird hours and that’s why he has his gear on and always carries his kit always with him. “At least people in the ghetto don’t boo me, I’m actually enjoying this quarantine,” he cried. A closer look at his face made me realize it was RISHABH PANT! 

Before I could gather myself to ask him to take a selfie with me, my spiritual coach said, “It’s time to go!”

He dragged me out of the club and I was like, “What the DUCK?”

And then suddenly I heard an apparition, it was a huge banging noise. Gods seemed to really suck at being percussionists. All of those noises accumulated into one unbearable screech and I woke up!