Team owners decide to simulate missing players in IPL (Satire)

IPL franchisee owners are clamouring for change.

Fed-up of being short-changed by the non-availability of key players, team honchos have decided to drive changes in the format of the IPL.

“After paying superstars millions of dollars, the least you could expect is that they would be on hand for the duration of the tournament.

But no such luck.”

“National team commitments are deemed more important”, complains a prominent  unnamed IPL co-owner.

IPL owners have got together and cobbled together a plan to use technology and even the odds.

If one of their  key players is missing for a crucial game, a computer program will simulate the performance of that cricketer  using past data.

Information would be fed into the system and the result of the game would be a potent mix of what happens on the field and ‘what if’.

Data would encompass various aspects of the IPL, recent history between players, current environment, effect of sledging on players and their reactions. Input from coaching staff is a key factor to making the software more realistic in its estimations.

To make up for viewer apathy during non-play, animated motion pictures depicting ‘what would have happened had he played’ are to be displayed on the large screen and simultaneously broadcast or streamed to television and internet audiences.

Each team is only allowed two such simulated games, at most, during an IPL edition.

What happens if the ‘simulated’ player wins the man-of-the-match?

The prize money will go to the firm that devised the software.

“This is just an extension to console games based on the the IPL.” says a games software developer.

Anil Kumble’s Stump Vision Ltd. is the leading candidate under consideration by the BCCI for this venture.

(All facts and “quotes” in this story are figments of the writer’s imagination. Mythical, you say? You tell me!)

Quote of the day:
A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people. – Peter McArthur

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