The Reason Why Indian Team Skipped The ICC Award Ceremony

A misplaced punctuation mark and a small typo has created an international diplomatic controversy of the magnitude not seen since the time of World War II. As reported by multitude of Indian news channels with enthusiastic energy surpassing the limits of human, the Indian cricket team has snubbed the ICC by turning a No-Show in the ICC Awards ceremony. A delayed invitation was reportedly the reason behind this. But as the ICC has come up with irrefutable evidence of having sent the invite well in advance, the Indian management is now revealing the real reason behind this act.

The ICC had apparently made a mistake in typing out the captain's name on the invitation letter. Instead of writing M.S. Dhoni, the ICC secretary had typed it out as Ms. Dhoni. When the Indian team management received this letter they were dismayed by this cultural indifference shown by the ICC. In India, it is customary to invite the head of the family to a function, not his wife. The matter was discussed with the captain and the team and a unanimous decision was taken that such gross behaviour shall not be responded to. A member of the managing staff told us - "The team members took it as a deliberate act of personal affront on part of ICC. We might have lost a few, er, all the matches but it is not polite to deliver such an unprofessional message". When we asked why didn't they take the issue up with ICC, the manager told us that that in India, such mistakes are not discussed with the host.

When we checked with ICC, they blamed the auto correct feature of MS Word for this fiasco. "Look, we are aware that this damnedest auto-correct makes a hell lot of mistakes and we had even circulated an email asking our folks to turn it off. But HR has hired such knuckleheads in the secretarial staff who can't even spell own their names properly that we allowed them the keep the feature on. After this, we are switching to Apple. May be they have a more intelligent auto correct." - an ICC source informed us. 

A section of the Indian management staff were incensed by the fact that the honorific Dr. was not used in front of Dhoni's name. Dhoni was awarded with a PhD recently by a British University.

As for the small matter of the Spirit of Cricket award for Dhoni, the media managers of the team have advised him not to associate himself with anything that has a synonym of alcohol in it. This after the unfortunate controversy of the "Make it Large" advertisements which had threatened to divide the team on their brand preference for getting wasted.


PS: Purely fictional and all puns intended.