India's secret formula to win the world cup

I was happily telling the spouse that I had remembered to buy bread from the bakery at 11:00 pm on my way back from a party and because of my foresight we were all sorted for breakfast.

The forever unhappy man complained, "we really need to have a better solution for breakfast. I'm fed up of eating cereal and toast."

I patiently heard him out despite such severe provocation. Unlike Djokovic, I didn't ask "have you ever played tennis? Or made breakfast?"

Instead, I told him "You need to be discontented in some aspects of life, that will reveal to you the perfection you have achieved in other facets of life. If you were satisfied with everything, you would stop aspiring. You need that little irritant to push you to excel."

The man doesn't appreciate the lengths I go to, to keep him happy and successful! It's a thankless world!

Continuing in the same vein, I served the previous day's sides and mixed it up with the fresh vegetables I had sauteed. I don't want him to get too content. I think he finally agrees with my philosophy for he raved about the food. My daughter laughed at this like a demented soul. I think she thought he was being sarcastic, but I know better.

Soon after, I settled down to watch the World Cup match between Australia and India with a packet of chaklis and a glass of juice. The chaklis were slightly stale making me feel the world was all good!

I witnessed the curious custom of the national anthem being played before a match instead of a war bugle. Imagine that! I'm guessing it serves the same function.

The Indian cricket team was lip-syncing the national anthem and as the cameras panned on their faces, I noticed a curious thing - every single one had fuzz on their faces. Except for MS Dhoni.

He looked positively dapper. A complete misfit. His clean-shaven face was such a contrast that one could only imagine he belonged to a rival team. Was he the spy who forgot his disguise?

The curious question troubled me and I reached out to my father, a keen follower of sports. He usually has the tabloid version of every event as well. He would gleefully describe the sensation caused by the revelation of Barbara Potter's underwear at Wimbledon.

He informed me that the Indian cricket team was following the age-old tradition that Indian moms had patented. They would protect their toddlers from the evil eye by putting a black dot so as to disfigure their perfect, angelic faces. All the cricketers were preventing the malignant evil eye from marring their fortunes by hiding their good looks with a forest full of hair. Dhoni, apparently a non-believer in superstition, showed his disdain by shaving his stubble. Some reports claim that news of pollution caused in Delhi by farmers in Punjab and Haryana, burning the stubble of their crops, had deeply affected him and he decided to show solidarity with the Delhi citizen by keeping his face clean shaven. A really evil person, however, told me that Dhoni didn't sport a stubble, because he was greying! Be that as it may, it occurs to me that the great man, Dhoni is causing discontent by his behavior and that can only mean that he will push his teammates to excel. Go India. Get that Cup.