The perfect mix of crazy and heart-warming is the governing criteria of any ICT team; be it 2013 or 2019 or long back in 1983.
This book is a compilation of every adorable moment of 83, and the wonderful facts I've collected about the team from bein...
Trigger warning: Mentions of the Bombay lobbying of the 70s and 80s, please don't read if you're sensitive to controversial issues like that, because I'm only here to write a Jimmy-Maddi fanfic and not to offend or hurt anyone.
In which Jimmy promises Maddi never to speak again just for the sake of being politically correct
***
1989...
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*** 6 years earlier...
The squad for the 1983 World Cup had just been announced the previous day, and the headlines of every major newspaper of the country flashed:
"NORTH BEATS WEST BY 1."
It referred to six players from Delhi being present in the squad against only five from Bombay (the rest of India had contributed to a total of three players—Roger Binny, Kris Srikkanth and Syed Kirmani), breaking into the long culture of the Indian team being entirely Bombay-dominated.
India was currently touring the West Indies—and losing—with only the vice-captain in imperious form, and the team selection news was not taken well by the westerners. Their leader and face had recently been removed from captaincy most unceremoniously and it was Kapil's first tour as captain. Then you get to know he'd been in meetings with the selection committee and got them to eliminate what was accepted 'normal' by the west and 'bias' by the north and south—the Bombay quota in the Indian team.
It led to, albeit unconsciously, resentment inside the men from the west, and their grudge found an automatic vent—the team meetings, where the captain led the discussion.
Most of them being seniors to the young 24-year-old Kapil, it didn't take much to shake him. One contradictory comment here, one slightly mocking comment there when he was talking strategy, and Sunny did nothing more than smile patronizingly once or twice when Kapil was speaking.
The north watched with growing resentment of their own, because they felt it was their duty to support the captain.
Jimmy, whose second nature was peacemaking, saw, however, that the whole thing wasn't serious enough that it wouldn't die down soon enough. It was mostly a childish grudge of the Bombay bunch on behalf of their Sunny bhai, and most of them were not in the World Cup squad either, so maybe it was a grudge on their own behalf, too, but it was mostly childish. It would die down.
Nevertheless on the eve of the fifth Test ended, blood was pounding in Jimmy's ears. Kaps had ended the meeting rather abruptly, and walked away with a slouch that yelled of under-confidence.
Most of his closest members, Cheeka, Kirti, Roger and Yash, followed. Jimmy and Maddi were left in the room with the westerners, who didn't seem at all affected by anything, indeed, and were already discussing about dinner.
Jimmy looked around at Maddi, lips pursed, expecting to share a grim glance. Maddi, however, was glaring malevolently at the tiny group around Sunny.
"You ghastly wimps don't deserve to be seniors in the national team," he said with ice-cold venom.
