Australians challenge Gambhir to smile

New Delhi. The ongoing India Australia test series is also throwing up a series of controversies. The latest being heated altercations between Australian cricketers and Indian batsman Gautam Gambhir. Sources tell Faking News that the root of the latest row has been rather unfriendly banters by Australian cricketers targeting smiling abilities of Gambhir.

Indian media has been known to joke that Gambhir is truly very gambhir (serious) in his conduct as well, which makes him smile very sparingly on or off the field. It seems Australian cricketers picked it up from there and started passing comments on Gambhir’s smiling abilities during the third test match when he was playing exceedingly well with little master Sachin Tendulkar.

Faking News has learnt that Australian cricketers threw banter like, “matey can’t smile, let’s tickle him there”, “stretch your lips more than your arms baby”, “punter, can you tell him some yo-mama jokes?” etc. There were some rude and vulgar comments passed too which Faking News editorial team has decided not to publish.

Gambhir finally thought it was too much and shot back at Katich when umpire Halle Beri Billy Bowden had to intervene. But this retort did not stop Australian cricketers and in fact gave them new ideas to annoy Gambhir even further.

Our sources say that the Australian close-in fielders are now using the famous sentence from Hollywood blockbuster ‘The Dark Knight’ – let’s put a smile on that face – to upset Gambhir’s rhythm and concentration.

In fact the antics of Australian cricketers have gone off the field as well with Gambhir being shown a distorted image of himself where he is shown smiling like the Joker. Gambhir was e-mailed this picture apart from one unnamed Australian cricketer showing him a print out of the same during tea-break.

But Gambhir seems unfazed by all this. “I am not only going to smile, but India is going to have the last laugh. By doing such things, they are proving themselves to be joker, not the other way round.” the Indian opener told Faking News.

But BCCI is not taking the matter so lightly. BCCI spokesperson Rajiv Shukla has demanded that all computers, laptops, and PDAs of Australian cricketers should be confiscated and an enquiry should be held to find the person who distorted Gambhir’s picture. He told that BCCI will soon register an official protest with ICC in this regard.

Cricket Australia (CA) has downplayed the whole matter and has appealed to BCCI not to react in haste. CA officials told Faking News that such actions are part and parcel of cricket and Indians are being cry-baby by reacting negatively to them. In fact, CA has termed the picture of Gambhir as being a ‘cool’ one.

CA also received support from former Australian wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist, who told that Indians need to be more sportsmanlike.

“Indians, especially Gautam Gambhir and even Sachin Tendulkar, have been smiling very rarely on field and especially when they lose a game. I guess the current team is doing good by egging them to smile. I am really sorry that I forgot to put this in my book, but good that it has come to the fore now.” Gilly called up our correspondent to clarify.