At first, we met a furious Afridi. "I am the man", he told us a while ago, "I single-handedly lifted the 20-20 world cup for Pakistan and these guys are insulting me and my nation!" When he asked us if 'single-handedly' was a single word, we realised he was paid for every word he said, by someone. Any guesses?
We caught up with the Chairman, Lalit Modi, at his sprawling mansion in Karachi to see if all these rumours of Ignore-Pakistan being a big advertisement held any water. "Nonsense", he dismissed it in one word, "Even the current Australian team had no takers, did you know? Now you'd say they protested against the Australian govt for the alleged racist attacks?" While we gave it a thought, he followed it up with a quieter, "My! How did I miss this one?"
Then we met this author's ex girlfriend and Punjab franchise's owner Preity at her house, to ask her the most intriguing question of the lot, "Why Kaif?" She asked the reporters to send her love to this author before saying with a smile,"We have a funny guy in our team who drops catches, irritates us to no extent and manages to get slapped by members of the opposing team before our boys could get their hands on him. Kaif is a good fielder, they say. So we plan to keep him around Appam so that he can catch every ball Appam drops." An intelligent reporter retorted, "Why wouldn't you just drop (from the team) the guy who drops catches?" Preity's reply was instant. "Where's the fun, then? Moreover, Lalitji pays us big time for every game he plays."
In another related incident, Sohail Tanvir came to our office and demanded that his interview be taken. We started with, "Well, you, along with Kamran Akmal, let Rajasthan Royals rot in hell last season. If you weren't political, you should have probably given up your citizenship for the game. Why didn't you? Weren't the Royals cheated then? They were pathetic, we say. Did they claim any compensation from you?" He said a forty 'erm...'s but is yet to answer us.
- The Fakking news team
Note: Every line in this post that precedes this line is obviously fictional. On a serious note, if there was even the slightest possibility that a player may not be able to participate in the tournament, I wouldn't pick him. Accusing a govt for this is utter idiocy. I am not sure if any Government would rather hatch a conspiracy in a sports tournament cum fashion parade, when it has poverty, terrorism, economic depressions and an Hon minister of state for external affairs to deal with. Ridiculous, yes? Boy, reality's funnier than fake news.
