Chapter 30: Chapter 30: Meeting a legend & Future Tournament
The evening sky over Dadar was thick with dark clouds. I sat on the iron railing of our balcony, watching a local train move past the Tilak Bridge lines. The silver Best Batsman trophy sat on top of our television box inside the living room. Nobody was looking at it. My shoulders were stiff, and my palms felt raw from the rough twine of the bat handle.
One hundred and five in the first innings. Sixty-three not out last week. Fifty-three today. We still lost by an innings.
I kept doing the math over and over again in my head. It didn’t make sense. In my past life, I always thought that if you had the highest system synchronization—
if you used the templates of the greatest players—you just won the match.
I thought it was a mechanical rule. But Kulkarni’s ball had hit that crack, the ball had popped up to short-leg, and the rest of our batsmen had completely folded.
The template system wasn’t a magic cheat code. It was just a tool. If the other guys around you were panicking under the pressure of a big deficit, you could bat for seven hours and still lose. The realization stayed right behind my ribs like a dull weight.
"Kabir, put your shoes on," my dad said, walking out onto the balcony. He had changed his dirty shop clothes for a clean, ironed blue shirt. "We are going to Pritam Hotel for dinner."
I looked up from my knees. My mom was already standing near the front door, fixing the pins on her dupatta. We only went to restaurants for weddings or during festivals.
"Is someone coming over, Dad?" I asked, sliding off the railing.
"No," he said, checking his wallet. "Just the three of us. Move your feet, the tables fill up fast after six."
The walk to the restaurant was quiet. The main Dadar streets were packed with people coming out of the station. The air smelled of scooter exhaust, wet mud, and frying onions from the road stalls. Inside the hotel, the yellow lamps were dim, and the old air conditioner made a loud humming noise against the window glass.
My dad didn’t look at the budget thali section. He called the waiter over and ordered a plate of butter chicken, tandoori rotis, and mutton biryani.
When the plates arrived, nobody said a single word about the Giles Shield final. My mom didn’t ask about the match, and my dad didn’t break down my second-innings dismissal off the crack ball. My mom just talked about her sister’s family in Amritsar, and my dad complained about the new wholesale prices of English willow leather pieces coming from the Jalandhar factories.
"Eat the chicken, Kabir," my mom said, dropping a thick piece into the middle of my rice plate. "You look thin after all that running."
I tore a piece of the roti, dipping it into the gravy. The food was hot, but my jaw was tired from three days of chewing maidan dust. I looked across at my dad. He was chewing his food slowly, his arms resting on the laminate table, completely calm. For the first time in six months, he wasn’t looking at me like a coach checking a machine. He was just a father buying his family a meal after a bad loss. We finished eating in a heavy, simple silence, with only the sound of spoons hitting the steel bowls.
By 4:50 AM the next morning, the fog over Shivaji Park was very thick. I could barely see the white stone borders of the nets near the road. The morning air felt damp against my skin as I pressed my cycle past the mud tracks.
Achrekar sir was standing right by Net Number 3. His Bajaj scooter was parked under the banyan tree, the exhaust pipe giving a small hiss as the engine cooled down. But he wasn’t alone today.
Standing right next to his leather kit bag was a short, curly-haired teenager wearing a faded blue India training shirt. He looked small, his shoulders slightly hunched as he shifted his feet in the grass. He was holding a gray bat case, talking to the coach in a very quiet, high-pitched voice.
My chest tightened instantly. I knew that face. It was Sachin Tendulkar. He was seventeen years old, already holding his first Test century from the England tour last summer, and he looked incredibly shy. His hands were tucked deep into his trousers pockets.
"You’re late, Kabir," Achrekar sir barked as my cycle tire hit the gravel. "Get your pads on. Don’t waste the morning light."
I dropped my cycle against the banyan trunk, my fingers trembling a little bit as I unzipped my canvas bag. Sachin looked over when my leg guards hit the dirt. He gave me a short, quiet nod, his face modest and completely reserved.
"This is the boy, Sachin," Achrekar sir said, pointing his fountain pen toward me. "Batted five hours on Day One. But he played a loose punch on the third day and threw his wicket to short-leg."
Sachin cleared his throat, his voice very soft and polite as he took a step toward my plastic crate. "I saw the scorecard in the newspaper, Kabir. Eighty-three against Anjuman, then a hundred in the final. Good batting."
"We lost the match, sir," I said, pulling the white cotton straps tight around my shins. "We couldn’t clear their lead."
Sachin sat down on a low wooden box near my bag, picking up an old leather ball from the bucket and turning it in his fingers. "It happens. In Mumbai school cricket, if the pitch breaks on the third day, saving a match alone is very difficult. I lost two major finals with Shardashram when I was your age. You feel like you did everything, but the team still walks away without the shield. It stays in your head for a few days."
I looked at his palms. They were covered in the same yellow leather callouses as mine, but his wrists looked thick and dense from international bowling spells.
"What is it like, sir?" I asked, looking up at him. "The Indian dressing room. Facing Akram in Sialkot."
Sachin gave a small, quiet laugh, his shoulders moving a little bit. He looked down at the grass, his voice getting even softer. "The first over from Wasim... I didn’t even see the ball, Kabir. Honestly. The pace was different from anything we face on the maidans. The ball hits the dirt and it’s past your ear before you can even complete your back-foot trigger. I came back to the dressing room and thought I wasn’t good enough for international cricket. I wanted to pack my bags and go home."
He stopped, tossing the red ball an inch into the air and catching it cleanly. "At seventeen, playing against guys like that is scary. But then the seniors spoke to me. They told me to stop looking at the scoreboard and just survive the next ten minutes. If you can survive ten minutes against that speed, your eyes adjust. Your hands handle the rest. You can’t think about the size of the bowler or the crowd. Just focus on the red leather coming out of the shirt."
"Did your arms hurt after the first spell?" I asked, thinking about my own physical limits.
"Every single day," Sachin nodded, his eyes looking serious. "But Achrekar sir makes you run those boundary laps for a reason. If your legs don’t have the strength by the fourth day, your head drops, your bat flows away from your body, and you edge it to slip. Never miss the morning practice, Kabir. Especially when you lose."
Achrekar sir walked over, tapping his wooden cane against the iron net pole. "Talking is finished. Sachin, take the plastic ball and throw some wide seam to him. Let’s see if his left shoulder stays straight today."
Sachin stood up, pulling a pair of worn inner gloves over his fingers. For the next hour, the seventeen-year-old international batsman stood at the crease, manually throwing balls down the fourth-stump line for an eight-year-old kid. He didn’t shout or give dramatic lectures; whenever my bat came down crooked, he would just walk down the pitch, physically adjust my elbow height with his hands, and say, "Head straight, Kabir. Try again."
The following Monday morning, the crowd outside the Mumbai Cricket Association office at Churchgate was completely chaotic. Over two hundred parents, school coaches, and junior players were pushing around the main wooden notice board near the glass entrance.
My dad kept his heavy hand on my shoulder blade, his large frame clearing a path through the shouting crowd until we reached the front row of the glass pane.
A fresh, white sheet of paper was pinned to the wood, the black ink of the stencil print still smelling clean.
MUMBAI CRICKET ASSOCIATION (MCA) UNDER-14 CITY ZONAL SELECTION LIST — 1991
My eyes ran down the list of thirty names chosen from the entire south and central Mumbai school divisions. Right there, tucked underneath the senior Shardashram names like Nitin and Vinay, was the final entry:
30. KABIR SINGH (Shardashram Vidyamandir) — Batsman / All-Rounder.
I felt my dad’s fingers tighten on my shoulder, giving it a single, heavy squeeze. He didn’t say anything out loud, and he didn’t look down at my face. He just turned around, his boots making a crunching sound against the stone steps as he began walking back toward the Churchgate station to open his sports shop.
I looked back at the printed selection sheet one last time before following him into the train crowd. The Giles Shield loss was finished. The official Mumbai selection trials were starting next week, and the real ladder was finally opening up in front of me.
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