Sri Lanka’s loss to Pakistan due to: Zainab’s selfie not pot bellies

There are many reasons attributed to the failure of our cricket team at the Champions Trophy. What surprises me is that the team had fared so badly in the recent past, that our ODI ranking had dipped to a position of no return and there was the likelihood that we would be eliminated like the West Indies. But, the cricket mad Sri Lankans expected us to win the Champions Trophy.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Hemantha Warnakulasuriya

There are many reasons attributed to the failure of our cricket team at the Champions Trophy. What surprises me is that the team had fared so badly in the recent past, that our ODI ranking had dipped to a position of no return and there was the likelihood that we would be eliminated like the West Indies. But, the cricket-mad Sri Lankans expected us to win the Champions Trophy.

The Minister of Sports earned the wrath of the cricket-mad public of Sri Lanka when he said, “Our Cricket Team is the un-fittest team in the competition”. He further said something about the protruding bellies of our cricketers. The comments were not to the favour of the Minister, who has a belly which is less than 2 inches, but to all those other fit cricketers who, like our mythical Dasa Maha Yodayas’, who had bellies protruding like Himalayan plate of rice all of us gobble to keep fit.

So it is very wrong for the Minister, who knows nothing about sports fitness, to compare his belly with that of the cricketers, as from Arjuna Ranatunga onwards, cricketers believed that their pot bellies are the measure of fitness like the sumo wrestlers. Hail! The Big Bellies and the dropped catches.

Malinga, whom I love as a cricketer, also got into the fray when he defended Tissara Perera for dropping the catch when he could not really bent down to get hold of the cricket ball. In order to defend his colleagues, Tissara Perera, Seekuge Prasanna and Danushka Gunathilake, he said he also has dropped catches. So, according to our beloved Malinga, the number of catches you dropped enhances your chances of winning. Malinga like a typical Southerner defended his buddies, even at his own peril, and the foreigners would have thought this is a part of cricket as no one expects sri Lankan’s to hold on to high a catch. As soon as it dropped there is a momentary silence and dancing in the aisles and parpare continues.

So Malinga has given us a new concept of the sports fitness where the size of the belly is proportionate to your fitness. No one would dare question him. But is that the reason we lost the important match against Pakistan? Pakistan vs Sri Lanka, both teams played their usual game no heroics and any one of the tiema would have won the match. Not long ago they were competing aginst each other to be the lowest in the ICC ODI rankings. Thanks to the West Indies Cricket Board West Indies won the competition very easily. The whopping the Pakistanis got at the hands of the Indians clearly showed what a low ranked team the Pakistanis were. How did the Pakistanis defy all expectations? How were they able to defeat such a mighty team like South Africa and eventually beat India? Thanks to Tissara Perera, Seekuge Prasanna and Danushka Gunathilake the Pakistanis were struggling against the no potbellied Malinga and the trio saved them, and the papare continued and the dancing was omnipresent.

Tissara Perera, who claims that he is the all rounder in the team and considers that all the advice, given by local and foreign coaches should be ignored, continues to fail and occasionally scores 20-30 runs. He is so generous, that he compensates the other side, by permitting them, through his sheer master class fielding, to score an equal number or more runs aginst us than he had scored. But is that the reason why we lost the match? The Pakistani journalists’ don’t think so.

Do you remember the 2010 Football World Cup? Defying all rationality the winner of the World Cup and all other matches was predicted by ‘Paul” the Octopus caged in Germany and it cost the bookies colossal sums as the results were 100% accurate. Similarly, there was ‘Marni’ the parakeet in Singapore whose predictions on sports matters defied all logic. There was also a time when most Sri Lankans dubbed one of our beloved commentators, as the man who was responsible for invention of the phrase by other commentators ‘commentators curse’. When he opened his mouth the result was obvious. It was against Sri Lanka. Sanath Jayasuriya was one man who suffered most. In comes the voice praising Sanath and out walks Sanath to the pavilion and then Muralitharan is hailed as the greatest off break bowler then next delivery is dispatched over the boundary for a Six. The listeners mute the sound until a foreign commentator takes overs.

Pic courtesy Twitter/Zainab Abbas

And now comes the ‘selfie” curse. An unknown sports journalist from Pakistan called Zainab Abbas, who has wooed all famed cricketers to take a selfie with her to their doom and destruction. She is young, beautiful and attractive and no cricketer had the guts to say no to her. She had this craze of taking selfies with the cricketers especially with the Pakistani team. They found that whenever she took a photograph with the Pakistani cricketers and uploaded it, the cricketer and the team failed miserably. Someone who followed this pattern advised her after the first match with India to try her Medusian magic with the opposite team.

The next mach was against South Africa. The South African team was also afflicted with a jinx. They miserably failed at ICC events when on paper they were the No. 1 team. The jinx that follows the South African team at important ICC events was supposed to be the ghost of their former Captain Hansie Cronje. Their captain A. B. De Villiers, the highest paid cricketer and one of the great wonders of modern day batters, was the biggest threat to the Pakistani team. So the Pakistani cricket crazy enthusiasts pleaded with Zainab to take a selfie with A.B. De Villiers and post it as they believed that this selfie would make miracles, and true to the belief, of those who followed Zainab, A.B. De Villiers got out for a duck, his first in twelve years.

But the worst was left to our dear friend Virat Kholi, when he before the Sir Lankan match, posed for a selfie and was out for a duck. It was the first time he failed to score in three years. Thanks Zainab Abbas for that little favour!

Defying all rational, logical thinking the team behind Zainab wanted another selfie taken with our own Angelo Matthews. So Mr. Minister, do not blame our poor pot bellied cricketers for their dismal performance. It had nothing to do with them. If you want to take any disciplinary action, take it against Angelo Matthews for having being lured by the modern Medusa of cricket, Zainab Abbas not by by her face with sankes sprouting from her hair but by a modern gadget a selfie making them to pose and showing little bit of her leg innocent, handsome males succumb to her and become her prey. So the result of the match was a foregone conclusion. Poor Matthews had to pay the prize for being lured into a web of deceit by this beautiful young Pakistani sports journalist.

When the Pakistanis won the Champions Trophy, Zainab was a folk hero in

Pakistan. Most people believe that Pakistan could never ever dream of winning the Champions Trophy even with the help of God. The selfie of Zainab had a crushing not only on the team but the medusian tentacles embraces every member of the team

I have a funny picture of the Indian support team shielding a cricketer during a practice session, as soon as they saw Zainab around.

So Mr. Minister, now you know why we and the Indians and the South Africans lost to Pakistan. Irrespective of your initiative our cricketer will remain un-fit pot bellied as their mentor Arjuna Ranatunga. You being an Angampura specialist do not try and would ask you to hire Zainab waste you valuable time to make them fit.They will throw the ball from the outfield to the wicket keeper who has to run to the middle of the pitch to collect it leave alone hitting the wicket, and running between the wickets if you observe closely they huff and puff gasping for dear breadth and run outs are galore. So the easiest method is to hire Zainab as a photo journalist of the Ministry of sports and you could see the results.