Chapter 31: Chapter 31: Workshop, Modern Bat & MCA
The heavy iron shutters of our Dadar sports shop came down with a loud, metallic clang that echoed through the empty side street. My dad locked the main padlock, his fingers greasy from the gear grease he had been using on the bicycle chains earlier that evening.
We didn’t head up the stairs to the flat. Instead, my dad turned on the single yellow bulb in the back storage room, the light casting sharp, flickering shadows over rows of stacked leather pads, unstitched balls, and raw wooden handles. The room smelled strongly of linseed oil, rubber glue, and damp canvas.
"The trials start on Tuesday morning," my dad said, tossing a junior-size Hans Raj bat onto the wooden workbench. "It’s a standard size four. Light willow. You can swing it fast against those thirteen-year-olds at Wankhede."
I picked up the bat, turning it over in my small hands. The face was heavily curved like a banana, the edges were thin as paper, and the bottom toe was rounded off into a smooth circle. In 1991, this was what every junior player in Mumbai used.
I set it back down on the grease-stained wood, pushing it away. "It’s too thin, Dad. It feels like a stick."
My dad paused, a grease-wiped rag halfway to his forehead. He looked down at me, his thick eyebrows drawing together. "What do you mean, too thin? Every kid in the Giles Shield plays with this model. Sachin played with a curved blade just like this when he was nine."
"The state quicks are bowling over one hundred and fifteen kilometers, Dad," I said, leaning my back against the shelf stack. "If a hard leather ball hits the edge of this banana bat, the wood will just vibrate and twist right out of my fingers. I need something with meat behind the line."
I stepped past his stool, reached up to the very top storage rack where the senior club gear was kept, and pulled down a raw, unshaped senior English willow cleft. It was a massive, heavy chunk of wood with twelve straight, tight grains running perfectly down the face.
My dad looked at the massive block of wood in my hands and let out a loud, mocking laugh. "You’ve lost your mind because of that century, Kabir. That’s a senior club block! You want to walk into the MCA zonal camp holding a tree log? The selectors will think Shardashram sent a cartoon character to the nets."
"We can shave it down, Dad," I said, putting the heavy cleft onto the workbench. "But we aren’t shaving it the old way. We aren’t curving the face."
"Every bat from Gavaskar to Tendulkar has a bowed face, you idiot," my dad said, snapping his fingers against the wood. "The curve absorbs the impact. If you make it flat, the willow splits within two sessions."
"No, it doesn’t," I said, grabbing a piece of white tailor’s chalk from the drawer. I didn’t talk like a textbook; I talked with the stubbornness of a shop boy who had handled thousands of modern profiles in his past life. I drew a bold, straight line right down the side of the raw cleft. "If you curve the face, you spread the density of the wood too thin across the whole surface. If we plane the face completely straight and flat, the wood fibers stay concentrated right in the center."
My dad leaned over the workbench, his large palms resting on the wood, staring at the chalk mark. "A flat face? You won’t get any elevation on the ball. It will just stay along the dirt."
"That’s exactly what Achrekar sir wants," I muttered, looking him straight in the eye. "And I want the toe cut completely flat and square at the bottom. No rounded edge."
"Are you stupid?" my dad snapped, his voice rising against the hum of the old ceiling fan. "A square bottom will get stuck in the grass every single time you try to slide the blade into the crease for a run. You want to get run out because of a fashion choice?"
"A rounded toe wastes three inches of solid wood at the base," I argued, tapping the bottom of the cleft with my finger. "Wankhede pitches have a flat, low bounce for spin. If they bowl a quick yorker and I drop the bat late, a rounded toe has no meat at the bottom. A square toe lowers the sweet spot right to the very base of the blade. The ball will hit the meat even if it’s a shooter."
My dad picked up the raw cleft, testing its weight in his hand. It weighed nearly three pounds in its unshaped state—way too heavy for an eight-year-old’s wrists to lift past the knee roll. He shook his head, throwing it back onto the bench. "Even if your logic isn’t complete garbage, you can’t lift this log, Kabir. Look at the edges. They are almost forty millimeters thick. Your wrist will snap before you can even complete a defensive back-lift."
"We cave out the back," I said, turning the cleft over to show the rear spine. I drew two deep, curved lines right behind the upper shoulders, near the handle socket. "Don’t touch the front edges. Leave them at thirty-eight millimeters. Just scoop out the wood from the very top back, right beneath the handle. Deep concaving. It pulls all the dead weight out from the top but leaves the middle and the sweet spot completely massive."
My dad stood there in the dim yellow light, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the chalk lines on the raw English willow. He didn’t speak for a long time. For thirty years, his family had sold traditional, thin, banana-shaped bats to every club cricketer in Mumbai. What I was drawing looked like a weapon from a futuristic movie.
"You’re a stubborn mule," my dad grumbled under his breath, but he reached into his metal toolbox and pulled out the heavy iron drawknife. He set the senior cleft firmly into the iron vice, tightening the screw handle until the wood was locked dead. "If you get out for a duck with this log, don’t tell anyone in Dadar that I was the one who shaped it for you."
"Just keep the edges thick, Dad," I said, sitting down on a low canvas crate.
The workshop filled with the sharp, rhythmic shuck-shuck-shuck sound of the metal blade peeling through the fresh willow. Long, curling ribbons of white wood piled up around my dad’s boots, the strong, sweet scent of fresh timber filling the small back room. He worked with great caution, his large, calloused fingers measuring the thickness with his metal calipers after every few strokes, making sure the face remained perfectly straight and flat.
By 12:45 AM, the floor was completely covered in a deep mattress of wooden shavings. My dad took the blade out of the vice, rubbed it down with coarse sandpaper until the grain stood out clean and sharp, and dropped it into my lap.
It looked completely bizarre for 1991. The face was as flat as a marble tile, the toe was a sharp, squared-off block, and the edges looked like a solid wall of wood. But when I gripped the twine handle and lifted it into my standard stance, my eyes widened.
The pickup was feather-light. Because of the deep scooping behind the shoulders, the weight had dropped completely, but the front profile remained massive. It was a modern Kohli-style blade, twenty-five years ahead of its time.
My dad wiped his sweaty face with his sleeve, grunting as he looked at the futuristic weapon in my hands. "Don’t show this to Achrekar sir tomorrow morning. He’ll hit you with his cane before you even take guard."
I gave the bat two quick taps against the workshop floor, a quiet, real smile hitting my face. "It’s perfect, Dad."
The next morning at 8:30 AM, the atmosphere outside the Wankhede Stadium practice enclosures felt entirely different from the local maidans.
The massive concrete structures of the stadium rose up into the morning sky, the main entrance gates manned by official MCA security guards in khaki uniforms. My dad walked a pace ahead of me, his large hand resting firmly on the strap of my canvas kit bag to help me carry the weight through the crowded pavement.
Over thirty boys were already gathered outside the nets, standing in small clusters near the iron barricades. They were the elite under-14 prodigies of the city—tall, athletic thirteen-year-olds from the top cricket schools in Bandra, Chembur, and Thane. They all wore spotless white uniforms, their leather kit bags brand new, their faces full of intense, quiet rivalry.
As my dad and I approached the gate, the chatter among the senior boys slowed down by a fraction. Several of them turned around, their eyes dropping to my small eight-year-old frame, then to the oversized canvas bag dragging near my ankles.
"Arey, look at that chotu," a tall fast bowler from the Western Zone whispered to his partner, pointing his thumb toward my boots. "Is this the Under-14 trial or the primary school sports day?"
His friend laughed softly, checking his spikes. "That’s the Shardashram kid who got the hundred last week. Watch him cry when Kulkarni bowls a real bouncer on this turf."
I didn’t look back at them. I just kept my eyes fixed on the green iron mesh of the practice nets inside the gate. Through the wire fence, I could see three senior selection committee members sitting on plastic chairs, holding long clipboards and wooden pencils.
My dad stopped right at the entrance line where the parents were barred from entering. He reached down, lifted the heavy canvas strap off my shoulder, and handed me the kit bag. He didn’t give me a long motivational speech, and he didn’t tell me to be careful against the older boys.
He just looked at the new, square-toed bat handle sticking out of my zipper pocket, then looked at the selectors inside the gate.
"The ball will come on fast today, Kabir," my dad said, his voice flat against the noise of the Churchgate traffic behind us. "Don’t let them push you deep into the crease. Stand your ground."
I gave him a single, firm nod, gripped the canvas handles tight, and walked past the security guard into the Wankhede enclosure. The school matches were over. The real selection grind was starting right now.
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