Satire Saturday | What are cricket fans doing in quarantine
When I first held a cricket bat, I was three years old and that damn piece of willow has stayed with me for my whole life - in different forms, of course. And now, the privilege of watching the greatest sport in the world has been taken away due to a darned ‘bat’ that was killed somewhere in China.
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.
Next day at work, I found sanitizer bottles on the reception desk and it was getting serious for sure. It was officially global and cricketers with symptoms of cold were being tested. But the worst part was about to come. All major series, all over the world, started getting cancelled. I literally sat down and watched and even ENJOYED the last two PSL games that were played before it got cancelled too. When the news broke out, I was sitting at my desk at work with four other people around. Suddenly the lights dimmed and the world around me got darker and all I could hear was my spiritual coach speaking loud and clear. Let me give you a little history here.
Before I met my spiritual coach [I can’t really name him because he is quite the unpopular guy amongst common folk] I used to be a pleb and basically unaware of life. Whatever I was doing was because of my parents and peer pressure. And then I met this guy who knocked some sense into my head and became my spiritual coach over the years.
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.
Suddenly, one fine day, I lost my calm completely when I couldn’t find my cricket diary, which was literally my personal diary till the age of 19. Yeah, that’s how cricket fans roll. I sat all day and sobbed and wasted my only off day. Suddenly, it was 4 am and all the videos of happy people going for walks early morning, doing exercise at home and social distancing with their favourite people, made me mad. That was when my spiritual coach said, calmly, “Am I not enough for you?”
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.
I slowly learned about each one of them as they accepted me as their own. My spiritual coach smiled from behind while listening to Anesthetize on his Spotify, with earphones on. I somehow always know which exact song he plays at what point.
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.
Fan 2, here, is obsessed with gardening because it’s a cricketing term. She’s trying to learn all kinds of cricketing terms there is and not just follow the game because of Virat Kohli and his beard. She actually made a dent on the wooden floor with her incessant gardening. “All I get to look at are Virat Kohli’s selfies with Anushka. I don’t want to see him with another woman!,” she exclaimed.
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.
I could sense my spiritual coach’s song change to ‘Buying a New Soul’. I think it’s my superpower, but no one should know this.
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!”
So, yeah, my friendship with Rishabh Pant never really happened.
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!
“Oh, God! It was all a dream,” I spoke to myself. My spiritual coach was nowhere to be seen and oh, of course, it was just my depression talking. I checked my phone, filled with notifications on Facebook and Twitter, and it was 5 pm on a Sunday. Oh, well, yes! The banging noises were for real. Our honourable Prime Minister had arranged the biggest gig there is at 5 pm that evening. And, at that moment, I realized that I had missed out on the greatest concert the world had ever seen!
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