MUMBAI - INDIA: India's Champions Trophy cricket team received some unusual advice from its (South African) coach Gary Kirsten and mental conditioning expert Paddy Upton: sex before a match increases athletic performance. In order to increase the mental conditioning and fitness of his players the coach exhorted them to have lots and lot of aggressive sex before the game.
When some players said that was not possible as they had left their wives back home they were told that masturbation delivered the same results.
"Having sex increases testosterone levels, which causes an increase in strength, aggression and competitiveness," Kirsten and Upton advised the players.
Naturally in a country obsessed with sex and sexual mores this has caused many raised eyebrows and titillated the chattering classes. However, the usually not-so-obedient cricketers have taken this advice to heart. The result: numerous hand and finger injuries are keeping many of them out of the competition.
This has upset the BJP (Bharatiya Jinnah Party) to the extent that the creakingly old and dessicated party honchos have demanded that the government put out a "white paper" to discuss this "attack on our national security". In coffee bars all over the country cricket fans were going insane destroying property. Saffron-clad activists marched through the cities demanding the head of the coach for his "un-Indian vulgarity".
CNN's Wolfen Blitzen unfamiliar with the game attempted to introduce cricket jargon into his banter with colleague Jack McCrappypoopface:
"Talk about your maiden overs Jack; we can't say whether this is a short mid-wicket backward short leg fiasco. Is it an armball come to the crease? Maybe it's a Dibby Dobbly. I spoke to one bowler who said maybe he should have done a Featherbed. Another player told me he was going for a Donkey drop. Bump ball, gazunder, bosey - it all sounds like double dutch doesn't it Jack. Like we Yanks say Howzat"?
India is preparing for the Champions Trophy tournament opener on Saturday. Meanwhile the younger members of the team have declared themselves "fighting fit" praising their coach's "wise and too-good" advice.
