Free Web NovelChapter 24: Chapter 24:
The 2:30 PM bell rang from the pavilion. Metallic, loud, annoying. Nobody wanted to get up from the wooden benches. My uniform was stiff from dried sweat, the collar scratching like a blunt razor against my neck every time I turned my head.
Nitin picked up his bat. He pressed a thumb against a peeling piece of tape on the edge, then tapped his white pads. "Four an over, Kabir. But Achrekar sir caught me outside the toilet. He’s pissed about Sanjay throwing his wicket away before lunch. Said if anyone lofts the ball, they’re benched. Keep it on the turf."
"He’s right," I said, pulling my gloves on. My fingers were swollen, aching from the morning session. Tying the Velcro felt like ripping tape off raw skin. "Their spinners are dead tired. Look at Joshi’s shoulders. They’ll bowl wide to make us reach. If we don’t give them a wicket before four-thirty, they’re finished."
Nitin spat onto the dirt outside the tent. "Yeah. Let’s go."
We walked out. The sun was directly over the bowler’s arm now, turning the white sightscreen into a massive, blinding glare.
Sule Gurukul’s captain didn’t bring back the fast bowlers. He kept his left-arm spinner, Joshi, operating from the pavilion end. Joshi’s face was bright red, his whites covered in mud from some diving stop he’d made earlier. He wasn’t tossing it up anymore. Just darting it flat into the rough patches outside off-stump.
I took my stance, keeping my weight low.
Wide of the crease. Don’t chase it.
Joshi ran in, arm coming over quick. The ball hit a thick crack, stayed ankle-high, and zipped past my outside edge. Straight into the keeper’s gloves.
Smack.
Sanjay called out from the dugout, "Good leave, Kabir! Keep standing there!"
For the next two hours, the match didn’t move. The scoreboard was completely frozen. Whenever Joshi or their off-spinner landed it on a length, I just put my front foot forward, covered the line with the pad right behind the bat, and blocked it dead.
Thud.
Thud.
Their short-leg fielder moved closer until he was standing barely six feet away. I could hear him breathing heavily through his helmet grill.
"Bowl straight, Joshi," the short-leg muttered into the dirt. "He won’t hit. He’s scared."
I didn’t look at him. Just cleaned the crease with the toe of my shoe. When they got frustrated and bowled on my pads to save energy, I didn’t swing hard. Just turned my wrists at the last millisecond, nudging the ball into the empty space at mid-wicket for a single. Nitin did the same from his end, scratching out ones and twos. He hit his fifty with a single to long-on, raised his bat for a second, and took guard again.
By 4:20 PM, the long shadows of the banyan trees were touching the pitch. My forearms were vibrating from the constant impact of the wood meeting leather.
The main umpire walked over and lifted the bails.
"Stumps!"
I gave Nitin a quick tap on his bat handle. We walked back to the tent without talking. The scoreboard read 198 for 1. Nitin was on 62, and I was sitting on 91 off 146 balls.
Nine runs for the century.
Saturday morning at 9:30 AM was much quieter. The maidan grass was dry, and the pitch looked pale and cracked from the two days of heat.
The Sule Gurukul boys didn’t look fresh. Their opening bowler, Kulkarni, had a large bandage wrapped around his bowling elbow as he stood at the top of his mark. They had seventy-one runs left to defend, and they knew they only had nine wickets left to get.
I took guard at ninety-one. My palms were sweating inside the gloves.
Nine runs. Just watch the seam.
Kulkarni ran in, boots thudding against the turf. He tried to bowl a short ball at my ribs, but his pace was down. I stayed back, waited for the bounce, and clipped it past the short-leg fielder. We ran two easily.
Ninety-three.
In the next over, their left-arm spinner came on. He bowled three wide deliveries, trying to get me to chase a big cover drive. I lifted my arms and let them go. On the fifth ball, he drifted onto middle stump, and I pushed it down to long-off for a single.
Ninety-four.
The Shardashram standby boys were all standing near the boundary rope, none of them sitting on the kit crates anymore. My dad was standing by himself near the cycle stand, arms locked across his chest, watching my bat.
By 10:15 AM, I was on ninety-nine.
Kulkarni came back. He pushed his mid-on and mid-off right to the boundary line to stop a boundary. He ran in and delivered a full ball right on the fourth-stump line.
I leaned forward, chin over the ball, and punched it straight past his right leg. It didn’t have the speed to reach the ropes, but it rolled cleanly through the empty mid-off region.
"Two, Kabir! Run!" Nitin shouted, already halfway down the track.
We crossed for the first one easily. I turned hard at the non-striker’s end, my spikes slipping once in the loose dirt. I lunged back toward the batting crease, sliding my willow blade through the red dust just as the keeper collected the throw and broke the stumps.
The leg-umpire didn’t even look at the other square. He just nodded.
[Tendulkar Sync: 17.7%]
1
[Status: 101* (168)]
The Shardashram tent didn’t just erupt; it disintegrated into absolute noise. Nitin didn’t just hug me—he tackled me into a pile of dirty leg guards, his sweat-soaked helmet smacking against my shoulder.
"Giles Final, saala!" he screamed into my ear, his voice cracking.
The standby boys swarmed us, throwing empty plastic glucose bottles into the air. Someone smashed a heavy wooden bat against the tin roof of the dugout, creating a deafening rhythm. Sanjay grabbed my collar, shaking me. "Ninety-one balls blocked, you absolute stone! The Sule Gurukul bowler looked like he wanted to cry!"
Sanjay then snatched Nitin’s half-empty Goldspot bottle right out of his kit bag, chugging it while Nitin was still yelling. "Aye! Give that back, fatso!" Nitin swung a sweaty thigh pad at him. Two other seniors were already counting their crumpled ten-rupee notes, arguing over whether they had enough for two plates of vada pav or just limbu sarbat outside the gate.
Through the gaps in the screaming crowd of boys, I saw Achrekar sir standing by his Bajaj scooter. He didn’t join the noise. He just stood there, waiting for the circus to end.
I looked back toward the cycle stand. My dad was already moving, walking fast toward the main road to catch a crowded red BEST bus back to Dadar before the afternoon rush hit.
The rest of the chase took less than ten minutes. Nitin hit a boundary through mid-wicket, and I worked a loose ball into the covers to hit 272 for 1. The umpire called the match. Semifinal won on first-innings lead. Grand Final qualified.
Achrekar sir was standing by his scooter when we finally dragged the heavy kit bags over. He looked at my dusty trousers, then at my bat.
"Pads off quickly, Kabir," he said, his voice flat as always. "Tuesday morning five-thirty at Shivaji Park. The final is at Brabourne Stadium. If your feet don’t move there, you’ll look foolish."
"Yes, Sir," I said, putting my bat into the canvas bag.
By 6:00 PM, the small kitchen in Dadar felt smaller. My mom didn’t just hand me food; she snatched my kit bag away the moment I crossed the threshold, holding my red-stained white trousers at arm’s length.
"Look at this," she muttered, though her eyes were instantly checking my face for sunburn. "Two days in the sun. You look like a ghost, Kabir. Sit. Don’t touch anything with those filthy hands."
She had spent the last two hours on the phone with my maternal uncle, who lived near the ground, trying to get score updates because the radio wouldn’t broadcast school cricket. Her nerves always turned into aggressive cleaning.
She dumped a mountain of white rice onto the steel plate, drowning it in rich, red mutton rassa. As I reached out, my calloused hand trembling slightly, she noticed the raw, yellow skin on my palm. She stopped grumbling. Her thumb brushed against the blister, surprisingly gentle. "Eat," she whispered. "Before your father comes in and starts his analysis."
The balcony door creaked open. My dad walked in, a folded copy of the Mid-Day newspaper tucked under his arm. He didn’t look at me directly; he looked at my plate first, then sat down across the small laminate table. He took the crumpled scorecard cutting from his pocket.
His fingers were actually a little dirty from the maidan dust—he’d been tracking the score from the cycle stand since morning. He had spent four hours pacing under the banyan tree, smoking a cheap Wills filter cigarette every three overs out of sheer anxiety, though he’d never admit it.
"Kamlesh said you played twenty dot balls after tea," my dad said, his voice flat, trying to sound like a selector. "The ball was keeping low?"
"Ankle height, Dad," I said around a mouthful of rice.
"He was terrified," my mom interrupted sharply, slapping a bowl of kheer onto the table between us. "Standing there in the heat, watching you slide into the crease. Let the boy eat, Vinayak. No cricket talk until the plate is clean."
My dad cleared his throat, his voice cracking just a tiny bit as he adjusted his posture. He looked down at the newspaper cutting, his hand slightly unsteady as he smoothed the paper flat against the table.
"He stayed not out on a day-two track," he muttered to the wall, his voice quieter now, masking the shake in his fingers. "That’s what matters. Eat the kheer, Kabir. The Brabourne wicket won’t give you easy singles."
I nodded, taking another handful of rice. My body was completely broken from the three days of heat, and my shoulders were throbbing, but the local maidan rounds were finally over.
The Brabourne Stadium was next week.
