Chapter 49: The Wall
[Score: 51/5. Overs: 16.2. Batsman: Tarun 4*, Raghav 0*]
Raghav walked out of the shade, his bat dragging in his left hand. The world had shrunk to a small, suffocating bubble of heat, dust, and the sharp, throbbing, seismic pain in his right arm.
Sarma's words, "I picked a bastard," echoed in his ears. It wasn't a compliment. It was a sentence.
He felt the eyes on him.
The Goalpara team, their "scrapper" senses tingling, were like a pack of wolves that had just seen a three-legged deer. They were grinning.
The Kamrup dugout was a wall of silent, staring faces. Rajat and Chinmoy were sitting in the front, their expressions a mixture of contempt and hungry anticipation. They were waiting for him to fail.
Aakash, his roommate, was standing by the boundary, his face pale, his eyes wide with a terrible, shared knowledge.
