Chapter 1: The Opening Over

The ground smelled of bruised grass and distant rain.

Arjun arrived early, as he always did for things that mattered — forty minutes before the other boys, carrying his kit bag over one shoulder and his father's silence like a second weight on the other. The pitch had been prepared the night before. He could see where the roller had pressed the soil smooth, a long corridor of compressed earth between the creases, already beginning to lose moisture in the morning heat.

He had been selected to open the batting.

His captain had told him this the previous evening, over the phone, in a voice that carried the careful neutrality of a doctor delivering news that could go either way. You're opening tomorrow. Sleep well. Arjun had not slept well. He had lain in the dark and rehearsed it — the walk to the crease, the guard, the first ball — until the sequence became a mantra, lost its meaning, became just motion, just breath.

The opposition were already warming up at the far end.

He watched them and felt nothing, which he had learned to recognise as a form of readiness.

His father arrived twenty minutes before the start.

He did not announce himself. He simply appeared at the boundary's edge, near the sight screen, in the grey shirt he wore for occasions he didn't know how to dress for. Arjun saw him from the crease during warm-ups and felt the specific vertigo of being witnessed — that compound emotion, half pride, half dread, that has no single word in English but that every child who has ever played sport in front of a parent will know exactly.

He raised his bat in a small wave.

His father lifted one hand in return. Then lowered it. Then looked at the scoreboard.

The umpire called the players in.

It was time.