Chapter 2: The Middle Overs

By the fifteenth over, Arjun had scored thirty-one runs.

Not elegantly. Not with the fluid authority that coaches talked about, that loose-wristed grace that made batting look like conversation. He had ground for every run — pushed and deflected, run hard between the wickets, refused the ones that weren't there. His partner at the other end, a boy named Rohan who had more natural talent than sense, had been caught at mid-on for twelve, trying to clear the boundary when he should have been building.

Arjun had watched him walk back and felt, shamefully, relieved.

The game was simpler alone.

He was dismissed in the twenty-second over.

An edge. The kind that barely registers on the bat — a ghost of contact, more sound than feel — and the keeper's gloves closed around the ball with a completeness that seemed almost gentle, as if to say: it's all right. It was always going to end this way.

He walked back.

The boundary rope seemed further than it had on the way out. The ground that had been so full of possibility an hour ago was now just a field. He passed the opposition fielders without looking at them. He reached the pavilion. He sat down.

His father was still at the sight screen.

He did not look up from the ground, but he knew the grey shirt was there, in his peripheral vision, a smudge of witness. And then, after a moment that lasted the correct length of time, he felt rather than saw his father move — sit down on the bench nearby, not next to him, but close enough — and simply be there.

Neither of them spoke.

The game continued. Someone else walked to the crease.

The afternoon light fell across the oval in long, golden shapes, and Arjun sat with his dismissal and his father's proximity, and found that the two things together were almost bearable — were, in fact, almost enough.