India awarded the 2015 World Cup

Worried by India's inconsistent performance in the World Cup so far, despite the ICC and BCCI making every effort to ensure that the host nation has every possible advantage, cricket administrators are considering simply awarding the 2015 tournament to the Indian team.

"Everybody understands that cricket is profitable only when India wins. Which is why we've tried to schedule matches and generally design the entire tournament format to ensure this - but it still isn't working, yes?" said ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat, looking worried at the prospect of India's quarter-final exit. "It isn't good for the nerves, or for our wallets, if India exit early. So since everyone seems to be okay with tweaking the tournament format to favour India, next time around we'll just award the championship to India, regardless of what happens in the matches," he said.

Explaining further, Mr Lorgat added, "All the matches will be played as normal, and points will be awarded to the winning team. Except that, if a team wins against India, the match will be awarded to India. This will ensure that India will top the group stages, progress through the knockouts, and happily for all concerned, end up winning."

"Winning? Did somebody say winning? What? Where? Warlock! Warlock! Wheeee!" said actor Charlie Sheen, appearing out of nowhere and saying lots of words that start with W.

Former Indian Test great Sunil Gavaskar has welcomed the idea, saying that it will allow the Indian team to play freely, without the pressure of winning weighing down on their minds. "It's perfect. It will give Dhoni the opportunity to mess around with the batting order, decide whether to pick Chawla or Ashwin, and mull over bowling changes at his own pace, without worrying about the result of the match," said Gavaskar. "It will help the team play better cricket. Although better cricket will be quite unnecessary in this case, but still..." he added.

"And, before I forget - nobody is as good as Sachin Tendulkar!" exclaimed Gavaskar, maintaining his immaculate record of including a Tendulkar reference in every single conversation, however unrelated to the master batsman, he has ever had since 1990.

"Hey, that's not fair!" exclaimed an agitated Lalit K Modi, Commissioner (formerly suspended, currently former) IPL (England) (South Africa) (Seychelles). "They're just ripping off my original idea for ensuring that a franchise of my choice would win the IPL. Are there absolutely no professional ethics anymore?" lamented Mr Modi, his glasses misting over like Tata Sierra windows during a Chennai rainstorm. "Lack of transparency!" he grumbled, wiping his lenses with a miniature flag of the Cayman Islands.

However, the announcement has been welcomed by Indian cricket fans, who can now go about the business of boldly predicting an Australian victory, secure in the knowledge that this time their sly reverse-jinxing tactics are sure to work.

In a rather bizarre incident, two groups of young British men in a small pub in Sussex were reportedly involved in a violent brawl when they came to blows during a heated argument over the relative merits of Tamil Nadu and Railways as Ranji Trophy contenders.

Apparently one of the groups, proudly wearing t-shirts bearing the TNCA logo, proclaimed that Tamil Nadu was the greatest domestic cricket team in the world, which did not go down well with the Railways fans, who retaliated with harsh words that belittled the skills of Diwakar Vasu. The last straw was when one of the Railways faithful, a burly, blond youth named Harold, loudly proclaimed that Naresh Churi was a greater cricketer than WV Raman. What followed was a full-fledged festival of fisticuffs that only ended with the intervention of the local constabulary.

"I've never heard of anything like this before. Random English boys with fierce allegiances to Indian domestic cricket teams, so loyal that they're willing to trade blows to defend their team's honour? I bet they don't have anything like this going on in India, eh? Nice, sensible young men you have in that country." said one of the policemen, whose name may have been PC Goon.