No teams left after Dalmiya decides to clean up IPL

DISCLAIMER: This is a piece of fiction written for humorous purposes and should be taken in jest.

After new BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya’s strong cleanup act statement, a strange occurrence has… er… occurred.

There are no teams left in the IPL.

“Uhm, yeah, would you believe it? I wanted to eliminate all teams that had any possibility of corruption and association with bookies, betters, middlemen, or the guys who made the Musli Powder ad.”, said a sheepish Jagmohan Dalmiya, in a press conference after the event. “Now it turns out that all the teams are corrupt… And now there are no teams left to play the IPL!”

The unique problem has created inconveniences for many people.

Firstly, the franchises themselves. “Just because we manipulated emotions, withheld payments, built up emotions and let thousands down and shattered the hopes of so many doesn’t mean we need to stop being in business, right?”, said Royal Challengers Bangalore chief Vijay Mallya, before realising he got his two businesses confused – RCB with Kingfisher Airlines.

The players are worried as well. “Now who do I play for? Which other franchise would be stupid enough to pick me?”, said bowler RP Singh of RCB. His teammate Chris Gayle too was quite morose. “Damn man. This means I’ll be playing for only 8 T20 teams this year. FML.”, he said.

Organisers, initially shocked, see the benefits in running the IPL without any teams. “It’s actually quite convenient. You don’t need to spend money on hosting the matches, listening to those idiotic cattle… Er, spectators complain about stadium quality… Wonder where to host the finals… All we need is Samir Kochchar making some noise on air, and we’re done!”, said an excited SET MAX employee. When asked whether people would tune in to watch a game when there was, in fact,  no cricket, he replied, “Dude – it’s the IPL. There is no cricket going on anyway. Just put some cheerleaders randomly dancing around, some 10 sets of ads and Danny Morrison screaming, and people will be entertained enough.”

Fair point.

“In order to avoid problems, the winner of the IPL7 will be decided by lucky draw”, said a BCCI official. “And of course, Jadeja will be man of the series. Only Sir Jadeja can do that in a series that he didn’t play”, he signed off with a hearty wink.

Purists of the game are, as usual, seething. “Back in our day, if we wanted to ensure that a team never played again, we just asked them to bat against the 70s West Indies pace attack.”