Free Web NovelChapter 15: Chapter 15:
The bucket in our bathroom was already swirling with dark, blood-red water.
"Look at this!" my mom, Harpreet, shouted from the bathroom, slamming the plastic mug against the tiled floor. "Harpal, come see what your son did to his new whites! This maidan clay doesn’t come out with normal soap. I have been scrubbing for twenty minutes and my fingers are raw!"
I sat on the low wooden stool in the kitchen, keeping my head down. My forearm muscles were so stiff they felt like hard blocks of wood. Every time I tried to curl my fingers, a sharp, dull ache shot right up to my elbow.
My dad walked out of the bedroom, carrying a small steel bowl filled with warm, pungent mustard oil. "Harpreet, keep the hot water running. His lower back will lock up by midnight if he doesn’t take a proper bath."
"He’s eight years old, Harpal!" My mom walked out, her sleeves rolled up, her arms covered in white detergent foam. "You are treating him like a factory laborer! Look at his shins, they are completely blue from the pad straps!"
"It’s just maidan dust, Mom," I muttered, trying to lift my arm to reach for the water glass on the table. My shoulder gave a loud click. "The seniors were—"
"You don’t talk, Kabir," she snapped, pointing her foam-covered finger at me. "Seventy-three runs? Who told you to stand out there until five in the evening? The other boys got out and came back to sit nicely under the fan. Why couldn’t you just—"
"Because his coach would have benched him," my dad interrupted, setting the steel bowl onto the kitchen counter. He pulled over another stool and sat straight in front of me. "Extend your left arm, Kabir. Don’t fight the grip."
I stretched my arm out across his knees. The oil was incredibly hot, smelling sharply of pungent mustard seeds. The second my dad’s calloused thumbs dug into the meat of my forearm, I winced, my teeth grinding together.
God, that hurts. It feels like he’s scraping the muscle right off the bone. Hold it still. If the fibers stay tight, I won’t even be able to lift the bat tomorrow morning.
"Loosen the wrist," my dad muttered, his fingers working ruthlessly through the knots near my tendon. "The Anjuman spinners will bowl long spells from the pavilion end tomorrow. The morning sun will be behind them, so the ball will look darker coming out of their hand. Don’t chase the wide ones early."
"The ball is forty-five overs old, Dad," I panted, sweating from the sheer pain of the massage. "It’s completely soft. It’s not going to—"
"It will slide," he cut me off, shifting his thumbs toward my shoulder blade. "An old ball on a dry, cracked morning behaves like a brick. It will stay low. If you lift your head early to see where the ball went, you’re LBW before you can even cry."
"I know," I said, my voice muffled against my sleeve. "I saw the cracks opening near the good-length spot."
"Good," my dad said, giving my shoulder a final, heavy slap. "Go take the hot bath. Your mother made chicken soup. Drink the whole bowl, don’t leave the lentils."
Wednesday morning at 5:00 AM felt entirely different.
When my dad shook my shoulder to wake me up, my entire body refused to move. My quads were completely frozen, and my lower back felt like it had been welded together while I slept. I had to physically roll out of bed onto my knees, dragging myself up using the edge of the wardrobe.
By 9:15 AM, we were back at Azad Maidan.
The morning sun was already bright, burning through the light mist and baking the turf pitch until the cracks from yesterday looked wider and deeper. I sat on the Shardashram bench, trying to bend my knees to tie the plastic buckles of my leg guards.
"Stiff?" Nitin asked, walking over with his gloves. He looked at my face, which was pale from the morning ache.
"My lower back," I said, pulling the strap tight.
"It’s always like this on Day Two," Nitin shrugged, sitting next to me. "The tail-enders are already nervous. Devendra is at number seven, and he can’t block a straight ball to save his life. Just keep the strike, Kabir. If you get out early, we won’t even cross two hundred and fifty."
"I’ll manage," I said, picking up my bat.
[Tendulkar Sync: 17.7%]
The blue text updated quietly in the bottom corner of my eye. The memory grid of Sachin’s balance settled into my shoulders, but my eight-year-old muscles were so sore they didn’t absorb the framework as smoothly as yesterday. I had to manually force my feet into the stance.
The umpires walked out to the middle. The Anjuman fielders were already on the grass, their captain setting a completely defensive field this time. They had pushed the mid-on and mid-off deep to stop the singles, but they placed three short catchers right around my bat—a silly mid-off, a short-leg, and a leg-slip.
Baig was holding the old, scuffed leather ball at the bowler’s end. He didn’t look fresh either; his thigh pad was taped up, and he was stretching his shoulder between steps.
I walked out to the striker’s end, marked my guard again, and tap-tapped the toe of my bat.
Just block. Don’t think about yesterday. See it out of the hand.
Baig ran in. His pace was down compared to yesterday morning, but the old red leather was heavy and skidded low off the damp soil. I lunged forward, keeping my chin over the ball, and met it cleanly under my nose.
Thud.
For the first four overs of the morning, it was an absolute slog against my own body. Devendra, standing at the non-striker’s end, was practically chewing his inner gloves from nerves. Every time Baig or Farhan turned around to look at him, he’d hurriedly look down at his shoes.
"Just tap it and look for the single, Devendra," I told him during the over change, walking up to the middle of the pitch. "Don’t try to swing hard. The ball is too soft for boundaries."
"It’s jumping, Kabir," Devendra whispered, his eyes wide. "Farhan nearly clipped my thumb on the last ball."
"Then let it jump," I said. "Drop your hands. Don’t follow it."
I managed to control the strike for the next twenty minutes, scratching out ten runs through painful, hard-run singles into the vacant point gaps. Every muscle in my legs was screaming with each stride, but the score slowly crept up. Seventy-three turned to eighty, then eighty-three.
Then came the forty-ninth over.
Baig ran in, his shoulders dropping early as he fired a quicker delivery right on the middle-stump line. I saw the trajectory and lunged forward into my standard front-foot defense, expecting the normal, low bounce of the old ball.
But the leather struck a jagged, widening crack right at the good-length spot.
Instead of bouncing, the ball completely died on the surface. It skidded horizontally along the dirt, staying less than three inches off the ground, sneaking right underneath the bottom edge of my descending blade.
Thud.
It struck me flush on the ankle bone before I could even drop my wrists.
"Howzatt!" the entire Anjuman team roared, the keeper jumping three feet into the air.
The umpire didn’t even wait for them to finish the shout. His right index finger went straight into the air.
Unplayable. Nothing I could have done about that one.
I didn’t argue. I unbuckled my gloves, tucked the bat under my arm, and began the long walk back to the tent. My personal score was locked at 83 runs off 188 balls. As I crossed the boundary rope, the entire Shardashram dugout stood up, clapping loudly. Even a few of the older coaches from the neighboring pitches turned around to look at me.
Achrekar sir didn’t say anything as I dropped onto the wooden bench, but he made a clean, sharp mark next to my name on his clipboard.
"Drink water," my dad said, tossing me a fresh towel from the corner.
I unstrapped my pads, my legs shaking from the relief of finally sitting down. I leaned my back against the canvas wall, watching the rest of our innings unfold from the bench.
Without an anchor at one end, our lower order was a complete mess. Devendra lasted exactly five more balls before he tried to heave Farhan over mid-on, missing the turn entirely and getting his off-stump knocked back.
"Stupid shot!" Nitin yelled from the tent, throwing his hands up.
Our number eight, Manish, and number nine, Devendra, tried to block, but they were completely terrified of Baig’s pace. Baig was bowling with an angry, aggressive rhythm now that I was gone. He cleaned up Manish with a fast yorker that went straight through his gate, and then forced Aniket into a clumsy edge to second slip two balls later.
They’re rushing. Nobody is waiting for the ball to reach the bat.
The only resistance came from our number eleven, Pradeep, who didn’t know how to bat but had a stubborn habit of putting his body in front of the ball. He took two nasty hits to the ribs from Baig, refusing to move, while our off-spinner Vinay scratched out a few lucky boundaries over the slip ring.
They managed to waste another forty minutes, squeezing out an extra forty runs through thick edges and leg-byes while the Anjuman fielders grew more frustrated.
But right at 11:30 AM, just as the church bells in the distance were striking for the lunch hour, Vinay tried a late cut against Farhan, got a faint edge, and the keeper swallowed it cleanly.
"All out!" the umpire shouted, lifting the wooden bails.
Our first innings was officially over. We were 282 all out in 72 overs.
The boys trudged back into the tent, their faces red and covered in dust. They were completely exhausted, but the scoreboard was solid. Two hundred and eighty-two on a cracking Azad Maidan pitch was a massive first-innings total for an under-14 match.
Kamlesh dropped his kit bag next to mine, looking at the board. "Two hundred and eighty-two, Kabir. They’re going to have a nightmare chasing this under the afternoon sun."
"The pitch is completely dry now," I said, reaching into my bag for the brand-new, hard red SG leather ball that the assistant coach had just dropped onto my lap for the second innings. The leather was cold, shiny, and the six-row seam felt incredibly sharp against my calloused fingers.
I looked out at the parched turf pitch as the Anjuman openers started pulling on their pads across the ground. The batting was done. Now, it was my turn with the ball.
