March 1978. The Malleswaram Grounds.
Varun Reddy was seven years old. He was a skinny, restless knot of energy with hair that refused to lay flat and knees permanently scarred from sliding on gravel.
He was playing for the "Colony XI," a ragtag group of boys from the weaver's lane, against a team from a local English-medium school, Bishop Cottons, who wore actual white uniforms and shoes with spikes.
The Malleswaram Grounds was a dust bowl. It was a chaotic ecosystem where five different matches happened simultaneously, the fielders from one game often standing next to the slips cordon of another., and the air was a constant cacophony of "Catch it!" and "Howzat!" in three different languages.
Varun wore his school shorts and rubber slippers. He kicked the slippers off when he went out to bat, preferring the grip of bare toes on the dust.
The bowler was a boy named Deepak. He was tall for his age and bowled medium-pace with a distinct, rhythmic run-up.
Varun took his stance. Feet wide. Bat high.
Deepak ran in. He bowled short and wide outside the off-stump.
In Chuck Thomas's world, this was a Ball. It was outside the strike zone. If you swung late, you fouled it off into the stands behind home plate for a strike.
But Varun was bored. The Bradman Template whispered a suggestion, an image of wrists rolling over.
Varun didn't swing. He just opened the face of the Kashmir Willow, using the pace of the ball against it.
Click.
The ball kissed the edge of the bat and flew backward, past the wicketkeeper's outstretched gloves, racing away to the boundary rope behind Varun.
Varun stood still, tapping the bat. "Foul ball," he muttered in English.
"Run, you idiot!" Ravi screamed from the non-striker's end. "It's four runs!"
Varun looked up. "What?"
"It went to the boundary! It counts!"
Varun looked behind the wicketkeeper. In baseball, the foul lines constrained the universe. A ninety-degree wedge of fair play. Everything else was dead territory.
Here, the field was an oval.
There are no foul lines, Varun realized.
The concept hit him with the force of a revelation. He looked at the vast expanse of empty field behind the wicketkeeper. The English school team had set their fielders in front of him, covering the "V" and the leg-side, expecting him to drive or pull.
They had left the entire 180 degrees behind him unguarded.
Deepak ran in again. He looked angry now. He bowled fast and straight, aiming for Varun's knees.
Turn on it, the baseball instinct said. Pull it over the fence.
"Too straight," the Whisper countered. "Just a flick. Let it go where it wants to go."
Varun listened to the Whisper. He stepped across his stumps, shielding them. He didn't take a backswing. He just met the ball with the angled bat and flicked his wrists.
The ball glanced off the wood and disappeared behind his legs, running fine to the boundary.
"Stop hitting it backwards!" Deepak screamed, his face red and sweaty. "Play properly!"
"Put a fielder there," Varun said. His voice sounded small, high-pitched, but he felt a strange, cold power.
He wasn't strong enough to hit home runs yet. His seven-year-old arms were thin and wiry. But he didn't need power. He could bleed them to death with angles.
The captain took Deepak off. He brought on a spinner, a chubby boy who tossed the ball from hand to hand.
"Watch the dust," the Whisper warned. "Cracks are opening up. Ball will bite."
Varun ignored it. He was feeling arrogant. He was feeling like Chuck Thomas again. The spinner tossed the ball up. It floated, slow and high. A hanging curveball.
Smash it, Chuck thought. Send it back to America.
Varun stepped out of the crease. He forgot the angles. He forgot the circle. He wound up for a massive swing, trying to heave the ball over the trees at Long On.
The ball hit a crack in the red dust. It gripped the earth and turned sharply left.
Varun's bat swished through empty air. The force of the swing nearly twisted him off his feet.
Clack.
The sound was dry and final.
"Out!" the umpire said.
Varun stood there, bat still held high in the follow-through. He looked back. His stumps were a mess.
He waited. He waited for the umpire to call a strike. You got three strikes. You got another chance.
But the boys in white were celebrating. Ravi was walking off. The game was moving on without him.
"That's it," the Whisper said, not unkindly. "One mistake. One life."
Varun tucked his bat under his arm. The shame hit him then, hot and prickling on his neck. In cricket, you didn't get to fail and try again. You had to be perfect every second.
He began the long walk back to the tree where his teammates sat. The dust burned his feet. He felt very small, and very alone.
The hardest part wasn't the heat or the dust. It was the waiting.
In baseball, when you got out, you went to the dugout. You sat on a bench with your teammates. You spat sunflower seeds, you shouted at the umpire, you analyzed the pitcher. You were still in the game. You knew you'd be back at the plate in two or three innings.
In cricket, the game just went on.
Varun sat on a jagged stone slab under the rain tree, his knees pulled up to his chest. He watched Ravi miss a straight ball and get bowled. He watched the rest of the Colony XI swing wildly and edge catches to the slip cordon.
He had been sitting there for an hour.
"This is boring," the Chuck Thomas part of his brain grumbled. "I should be fielding. I should be doing something."
"Watch the feet," the Whisper murmured. "Watch how they transfer weight."
Varun picked at a scab on his knee. "I don't care about their feet. I want to bat again."
"You can't," the Whisper said. "You gave your wicket away. Now you watch."
It was a cruel punishment. The dismissal replayed in his head, over and over. The slow flight of the ball. The crack in the dust. The arrogant, cross-batted heave.
"It hit a crack," Chuck argued. "Bad luck. In the Big Leagues, the groundskeepers would be fired for an infield like this."
"You played across the line," the Whisper countered, cold and clinical. "If you had played straight, the bat would have covered the spin. You played with ego. The game punished you."
Varun rested his chin on his knees. He hated that the voice was right.
The match ended. Bishop Cotton won by fifty runs. The boys in whites packed their kit bags efficiently, snapping buckles shut, sliding bats into sleeves. They looked like soldiers packing up camp. The Colony XI boys just picked up their gear in a loose pile.
Varun's father, Srinavas, was waiting for them by the main gate. He was sitting on his grey Bajaj scooter, He wore a bush shirt and green dhoti, his work bad hooked onto the front of the seat.
Varun walked over, dragging his bat in the dirt.
"Pick it up," Vikram said, not looking up from the paper. "Don't drag the blade."
Varun hoisted the bat.
"Score?" Vikram asked, folding the paper and tucking it into the side box.
"We lost," Ravi said, climbing onto the pillion seat behind Vikram. Varun had to stand in the front, between his father's legs, gripping the handlebars.
"And you?" Vikram looked at Varun.
"Twelve," Varun muttered.
Vikram kicked the starter. The scooter sputtered, then roared to life, shaking Varun's small frame. "How did you get out?"
Varun stared at the speedometer. "Spinner. Hit a crack."
Vikram engaged the gear. "Did you play straight?"
Varun didn't answer.
"Get on," Vikram said.
The ride home was a sensory assault. The scooter weaved through the Malleswaram traffic, bicycles, stray cows, auto-rickshaws buzzing like angry wasps. The wind was hot and smelled of diesel and frying snacks. Varun leaned back against his father's chest, feeling the vibrations of the engine through his sandals.
He closed his eyes.
"One life," he thought.
The concept terrified him. In his old life, he was a .300 hitter. That meant he failed seven times out of ten and was still a hero. Here, if you failed once, you were a liability.
They reached their house on 8th Cross, a small, whitewashed structure with a guava tree leaning over the compound wall.
Varun jumped off before the scooter stopped completely. He ran inside, dropped his kit bag in the hall, and went straight to the backyard.
It was a small patch of cement where his mother dried chilies and papads. The sun was setting, casting long, orange shadows against the wall.
Varun picked up his bat.
"Stance," the Whisper said.
Varun spread his feet. He looked at the wall. He imagined the chubby spinner. He imagined the ball floating in the air.
"Wait for it," the Whisper coached. "Don't lunge. Let it come to you."
Varun visualized the ball landing. He visualized the turn.
Instead of swinging across the line, he stepped forward with his left foot. He kept his elbow high, the bat coming down in a straight, vertical line. He met the imaginary ball right under his eyes.
Defense. Solid. Boring.
"Again," the Whisper said.
Varun did it again. Step. Elbow up. Block.
"Again."
Chuck Thomas wanted to scream. He wanted to swing for the fences. He wanted to hear the crack of the wood and see the ball fly. But Varun Reddy, seven years old and tired of sitting on the sidelines, kept blocking.
He did it until the sun went down and the mosquitoes started to bite his ankles. He did it until his shoulders ached.
He wasn't going to sit under that tree again.