Chapter 23: Chapter 23:
The concrete walls of the MCA pavilion offered no relief from the midday furnace. By 12:05 PM, the breeze from the western side had completely dried up, leaving the outfield baking under a flat, white sky.
I sat on the edge of the team bench, slowly chewing on a piece of salt-rubbed cucumber from my tiffin. My legs were heavy, the skin beneath my thigh guard damp with sweat.
Nitin walked over, strapping his watch back onto his wrist. "They’re starting with spin from both ends after the restart, Kabir. Their captain was talking to the left-armer near the main square."
I took a final sip of water, capping the bottle. "The ball is only eleven overs old, Nitin. It’s too early for pure spin."
"It’s not a normal pitch today," Kamlesh said, picking up his gloves from the floor. His shirt was already stained with fresh red dirt from his morning slide. "The cracks near the pavilion end have widened by at least half an inch during the break. If they land it there, it’s going to turn from a length."
"Then don’t play for the turn," I said, rising to test the buckles on my shins. "Play the line out of the hand. If it hits the crack, drop your wrists."
We walked back out at exactly 12:10 PM.
The Sule Gurukul fielders were already in position, their boots kicking up tiny clouds of fine dust as they adjusted their marks. Their captain had pulled the deep mid-off into the twenty-yard ring, leaving the entire deep boundary open. They weren’t trying to save runs anymore; they wanted to choke our scoring options until we poked blindly at the turning ball.
I took my spot at the non-striker’s end, leaning my weight against the handle of my bat.
At the bowling crease stood their primary left-arm orthodox spinner, a boy named Joshi. He didn’t look like the Anjuman spinners; his action was high, classical, and he used a heavy side-spin release that made the leather whistle through the air.
Kamlesh took guard, marked his crease with his shoe, and dropped into his stance.
Joshi ran in, his arm snapping cleanly at the crease. The eleven-over-old ball drifted through the air, landed right on the off-stump line, and bit the parched dirt.
Clack.
Kamlesh lunged forward, his vertical blade meeting the ball right under his eyes to drop it into the grass.
For the first four overs after lunch, the match became an absolute grind against the surface. The ball was still relatively hard, which meant every time it struck a rough ridge in the soil, it zipped off the pitch with an erratic, unpredictable bounce. Kamlesh managed to work a tight single into the vacant square-leg area, bringing my score to the striker’s end.
Watch the fingers. He’s holding the seam wider this time. It’s the arm-ball.
Joshi delivered. The ball didn’t turn; it skidded straight down the middle-stump line with the natural angle. I stayed low, waited for the bounce to clear my knee roll, and opened the face of the willow at the last fraction of a second to guide it past the short-third man fielder for a comfortable double.
My personal score moved to thirty. The team score slowly ticked to 49.
But the pitch was changing with every passing ten minutes. In the fifteenth over, their off-spinner came on from the Azad end, bowling a wide, looping trajectory that landed directly into the rough patches left by our fast bowlers’ spikes.
Kamlesh tried to survive by using his stride. He defended three balls cleanly, but on the fifth delivery, the off-spinner released the ball from wide of the return crease. The leather drifted into the fifth-stump line, hit a deep, crumbling edge of a crack, and turned sharply inward toward his ribs.
Kamlesh tried to adjust his wrists, but his front pad was completely blocking his bat line. The ball caught a thick inside edge, bounced off his flap, and flew straight into the palms of the crouching short-leg fielder.
"Howzatt!" the entire field roared.
The umpire didn’t even wait for the bowler to turn around. His right hand went up. Kamlesh dropped his chin, patted the pitch with the bottom of his bat out of pure frustration, and began the long walk back to the tent for a hard-fought 22.
Score: 68 for 1.
Nitin walked out at number three, his eyes fixed on the crumbling surface near the batsman’s feet. He stopped right next to me, checking the guard lines.
"We need over four runs an over from here, Kabir," Nitin whispered, his voice tense under his grill. "The required rate is climbing because of these dot balls."
"Forget the rate," I said, tapping his pad with my bat. "They’re bowling wide to make us reach. Just solid blocks. I’ll clear the off-side gaps once they tire."
Nitin gave a short nod and walked to his mark.
[Tendulkar Sync: 17.7%]
The blue notification faded quickly from my vision, replaced by the rigid, mechanical alignment of Sachin’s batting grid. My eight-year-old shoulders felt the heavy pressure of the 269 total, but the muscle memory allowed me to drop my center of gravity until my balance felt completely immovable.
The Sule Gurukul spinners were growing confident now that the first breakthrough was made. They pushed their short-leg closer, their captain constantly shouting from the cover region to build the psychological pressure.
"He’s a kid! Put the ball in the rough, Vinay! He will edge it eventually!"
Joshi ran in again, firing a faster delivery right into the central crack on a good length.
Inside my head, the grid read the trajectory instantly. The ball was going to stay low. Instead of reaching forward with a long, vulnerable stride that would expose my edge, I waited on my back foot, letting the ball travel deep into my domain. I dropped my wrists, loosened my grip on the handle, and used a soft, vertical defense to blunt the ball right into the soil.
Thud.
No run.
On the next ball, Joshi tried to bowl fuller, expecting another block. But I anticipated the length change. I didn’t swing hard; I just used my wrists to alter the blade’s angle, clipping the full delivery cleanly through the vacant gap between mid-on and mid-wicket.
The ball skidded along the dry grass, beating the diving fielder to hit the canvas boundary line.
"Shot, Kabir!" Nitin called out from the non-striker’s end, his face bright with relief.
That single boundary broke their tight choke. The Sule Gurukul captain had to push his mid-wicket back to save the four, which opened up the inner ring completely.
For the next forty-five minutes, Nitin and I systematically picked them apart through pure, old-school running. I didn’t play a single risky aerial shot. If the ball was in the rough, I blocked it dead. But the moment they drifted onto my legs to avoid the off-side gaps, I used a soft wrist-flick to send the leather into the empty deep-square region, running hard doubles that tested my eight-year-old stamina to the absolute limit.
My breathing became ragged, the sweat dripping from my chin guard onto the hot dirt between overs.
The heart is pumping too fast. Stay steady. Don’t look at the score. Just see the fingers at the release.
By 1:45 PM, my score had reached forty-eight. The Sule Gurukul bowlers were visibly draining under the afternoon sun, their over-rates slowing down as they constantly swapped the fields to plug the leaks.
Joshi delivered a tired, short ball wide outside the off-stump. It was a lazy delivery. I slid my back foot across, kept my head perfectly steady over the bounce, and executed a classical, ground-hugging back-foot punch straight through the cover-point gap.
The ball hit the boundary boards with a sharp clack.
My half-century was up off 86 balls. The Shardashram dugout stood up, clapping loudly from the shade of the canvas awning, but I just raised my bat quickly for two seconds and turned back to take guard. The target was still miles away.
Nitin grew more confident at the other end as the spinners lost their length. He launched a beautiful, lofted drive over the bowler’s head for a boundary, pushing his own score toward the late thirties. We were matching their intensity run for run now.
Right at 2:10 PM, as the distant church bells began to chime for the tea break, the umpire stepped in and collected the ball from the bowler.
"Tea!" he announced.
We unbuckled our helmets as we walked off the parched field, our faces completely red and covered in a thick layer of sweat and red dust.
The scoreboard at the tea break was perfectly locked:
Shardashram: 142 Runs / 1 Wicket (36 Overs)
Kabir Singh: 71* Not Out (94 Balls)
Nitin: 39* Not Out (62 Balls)
Runs Needed: 128 Runs remaining in the final session.
I dropped my heavy bat onto the kit bag inside the tent, my hands trembling slightly from the two hours of continuous gripping. Achrekar sir was sitting on his wooden chair by the door, his clipboard resting on his knees. He didn’t speak as I reached for the water jug, but he didn’t reach for his cane either. He just made a sharp, silent mark next to my name on the ledger. The real battle was moving into the final two hours.
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