Heaven. A cold morning of early January 2011.
God sips coffee early in the morning and checks his mailbox. He was out of office for the Durban Test between India and South Africa.
The box is overflowing. He finds a lot of applications from India requesting, or almost ordering him to award the 2011 World Cup to Indian cricket team. Reason: This will be Sachin Tendulkar's last World Cup.
His eyebrows get furrowed. Do these guys have nothing to do? Shaking His head, He opens the next email in his Prayers folder: from a 22 year old called Virat Kohli.
He knew a teenager by this name. That Virat had sent an email called 'silent prayer' to Him 4 years back on the eve of a youth cricket world cup final. At the time God had liked the boy's passion and granted his wish.
Turns out that this email is from the same Kohli Kohli's request is same as the others. But God is immune to such veiled 'give it to him' prayers which are truly intended for self. "Look's like the guy has grown up and as a natural consequence got greedier", He murmurs with a frown.
Then He sees some more requests from other Indian cricket players. God is struck by the common theme: not just the comon folk of India but even Indian cricket players are placing the prayers of World Cup win to Him on behalf of Sachin rather than themselves. "Oh my Rajnikant," God says, "what's happening here?"
God is impressed and decides to grant the common wish. But he wants to check genuineness before granting.
He loads the 'Future Preview' tool on his Cloudtop [not having MSW operating System, please be mindful, which is a banned substance in Heaven].
When God intends to verify genuineness of any personal promise / claim qualifying a prayer, he justs uses FP to simulate and check the person's reaction when the prayer gets granted. Instead of granting the exact prayer they asked for, God often fine tunes it from their FuturePreview reactions. People often do not express themselves so well in prayers.
[FP does not lie and is hence incompatible to MSW OS - another reason for not using the latter.]
He checks Kohli's reaction first, after a simulated World Cup win:
Kohli says "Wunnit for Sachin."
So far so good. God is a little repentent to have earlier misjudged Kohli as greedy. He moves on to the next sender. Zaheer Khan.
"Wunnit for Sachin", Zaheer says in the FuturePreview, pointing to Sachin.
Next is Yuvraj Singh - another second timer. God had recently granted approval for his request to succeed at 2011 World Cup with both bat & ball.
"Wunnit for Sachin", says Yuvraj too. He also goes on to say that the mysterious special person he wanted to win it for was none other than Sachin.
Gautam Gambhir. 2nd timer again. This guy wanted to do well in the Cup final, if his team progresses and if he gets selected. God had approved this guy's earlier prayer too.
"Wunnit for Sachin," Gambhir utters on Future preview.
Last one. This is the only World Cup win prayer for self from an Indian cricket player. You guessed the sender right: Sachin Tendulkar. FP had already started processing 'Sachin after grant of prayer'..but then the battery got discharged. God knew its contents though as he had already approved the prayer (this was a resend from Sachin). Sachin requested for a World Cup win as well as a 100th hundred for himself at the Cup final.
"Okay," God summarised, "I will give them all what they said they were happy for. Sachin wants the world cup, so I will give it to the Indian team for his sake. However all the others waxed eloquent in FP about their happiness at Sachin getting a particular score. So that removes the 100th hundred Sachin was destined to get in this match as per his own prayers. Instead I will grant the general players' preference of one-eight for Sachin."
That's how Sachin got 18 (one-eight) in the World Cup final instead of his 100th hundred.
“Wonder why these players prefer a particularly low score for Sachin in the finals…I have never seen so many people do that to a person they genuinely like!”
He finishes the coffee and moves to visit the World Cup stadiums. Most of them need His help to get completed on schedule.
---------------
cricinfo players' quotes after 2011 World Cup final: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/content/current/story/509249.html
God sips coffee early in the morning and checks his mailbox. He was out of office for the Durban Test between India and South Africa.
The box is overflowing. He finds a lot of applications from India requesting, or almost ordering him to award the 2011 World Cup to Indian cricket team. Reason: This will be Sachin Tendulkar's last World Cup.
His eyebrows get furrowed. Do these guys have nothing to do? Shaking His head, He opens the next email in his Prayers folder: from a 22 year old called Virat Kohli.
He knew a teenager by this name. That Virat had sent an email called 'silent prayer' to Him 4 years back on the eve of a youth cricket world cup final. At the time God had liked the boy's passion and granted his wish.
Turns out that this email is from the same Kohli Kohli's request is same as the others. But God is immune to such veiled 'give it to him' prayers which are truly intended for self. "Look's like the guy has grown up and as a natural consequence got greedier", He murmurs with a frown.
Then He sees some more requests from other Indian cricket players. God is struck by the common theme: not just the comon folk of India but even Indian cricket players are placing the prayers of World Cup win to Him on behalf of Sachin rather than themselves. "Oh my Rajnikant," God says, "what's happening here?"
God is impressed and decides to grant the common wish. But he wants to check genuineness before granting.
He loads the 'Future Preview' tool on his Cloudtop [not having MSW operating System, please be mindful, which is a banned substance in Heaven].
When God intends to verify genuineness of any personal promise / claim qualifying a prayer, he justs uses FP to simulate and check the person's reaction when the prayer gets granted. Instead of granting the exact prayer they asked for, God often fine tunes it from their FuturePreview reactions. People often do not express themselves so well in prayers.
[FP does not lie and is hence incompatible to MSW OS - another reason for not using the latter.]
He checks Kohli's reaction first, after a simulated World Cup win:
Kohli says "Wunnit for Sachin."
So far so good. God is a little repentent to have earlier misjudged Kohli as greedy. He moves on to the next sender. Zaheer Khan.
"Wunnit for Sachin", Zaheer says in the FuturePreview, pointing to Sachin.
Next is Yuvraj Singh - another second timer. God had recently granted approval for his request to succeed at 2011 World Cup with both bat & ball.
"Wunnit for Sachin", says Yuvraj too. He also goes on to say that the mysterious special person he wanted to win it for was none other than Sachin.
Gautam Gambhir. 2nd timer again. This guy wanted to do well in the Cup final, if his team progresses and if he gets selected. God had approved this guy's earlier prayer too.
"Wunnit for Sachin," Gambhir utters on Future preview.
Last one. This is the only World Cup win prayer for self from an Indian cricket player. You guessed the sender right: Sachin Tendulkar. FP had already started processing 'Sachin after grant of prayer'..but then the battery got discharged. God knew its contents though as he had already approved the prayer (this was a resend from Sachin). Sachin requested for a World Cup win as well as a 100th hundred for himself at the Cup final.
"Okay," God summarised, "I will give them all what they said they were happy for. Sachin wants the world cup, so I will give it to the Indian team for his sake. However all the others waxed eloquent in FP about their happiness at Sachin getting a particular score. So that removes the 100th hundred Sachin was destined to get in this match as per his own prayers. Instead I will grant the general players' preference of one-eight for Sachin."
That's how Sachin got 18 (one-eight) in the World Cup final instead of his 100th hundred.
“Wonder why these players prefer a particularly low score for Sachin in the finals…I have never seen so many people do that to a person they genuinely like!”
He finishes the coffee and moves to visit the World Cup stadiums. Most of them need His help to get completed on schedule.
---------------
cricinfo players' quotes after 2011 World Cup final: http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/content/current/story/509249.html
2 comments:
Hi Angshuman,
I was searching blog posts on my fav Sachin when I came across this one. I don't know why, but as soon as I clicked on teh link my net got dc. I had to reconnect it, take the pain of remembering and typing the same keyword again and finally I came across it again.
:)
Want to say that it was worth all that effort. I really really liked your writing and the humour too. Now on, will keep looking for new posts.
Rashmi Singh
http://gibberish-nonstop.blogspot.com/
@Rashmi: thanks for the compliments - the pleasure is mine. Be warned though that I am a very irregular blogger these days - this period was a special effort for World cup....(I made as many posts in the 1st hundred days of this year as I did in the whole of past 2 years)
If you love Sachin, then I suggest you go through the post http://pavilionview.blogspot.com/2009/11/20-yrs-of-passing-tests-and-22-yrs-not.html and the link in to that takes you to another post 'To our champion' - a post I wrote for an imaginary ideal champion sportsman and found none better than Sachin to dedicate to.
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