1983-Facts and Fiction

Dealing with pre-final jitters

"Why are you all late?" Kapil asked as half the team trooped into the field, laughing and falling over each other, led by, of course, their night captain.

"Is that a rhetorical question, Kaps?" asked Maddi, grinning.

Recently the flighty bunch—Patla, Kirti, Roger, Shastri had started dragging along Madan and Yash. Jimmy indicated at Madan not to rile Kapil up further.

"We have a final day after tomorrow," said Kapil, frowning. "You should abstain from pubs at least for two days."

"We didn't go to a pub—we were—er, celebrating the semi-final victory, Kaps," said Roger. "Thought you wouldn't mind."

"Maybe I wouldn't have if you hadn't turned up late," said Kapil. "We were about to end the session."

"No, no, don't do that," said all the partygoers in unison, and assured him they were extremely eager to put in three hours of practice right then at least.

That mollified Kapil a bit, though few minutes later he was complaining to Jimmy, "What do you do with a team who wouldn't take itself seriously?"

"Er—"

"They still don't believe we can win the World Cup."

Jimmy thought it'd be stupid to say, "I don't believe that either, Kaps, it's the West Indies we're playing against—the team which has already won two finals, remember?"

So he chose to say, "Even so, I'm sure they'll all put their best foot forward, don't worry, Kaps."

Patla dropped a catch (as usual). Kapil surveyed him darkly, muttering, "They get especially casual in the evening sessions."

Jimmy personally agreed.

Kapil announced, "We'll have our practice session tomorrow early morning, so we can have the evening free. Everyone report to the ground at seven thirty am. Got it?"

Of course, that dismayed every person in the team. Practice session at seven thirty meant you'd have to get up at least at six thirty, because the grounds was a half hour's run from their hotel.

However, everyone called, "Sure, Kaps!" careful as they were to keep their captain happy.

"You might—er, make it eight thirty," suggested Jimmy, who was an early riser, but knew most of his team (including Kapil) was not.

"No," said Kapil.

****************

That night, just before going to sleep, Jimmy discovered that his alarm clock had gone dead, which did not seem to him a good omen, because he was pretty dependent on the clock.

He went to Kapil's room, which was adjoining his. Kapil was dependent on his alarm clock, too, because the two of them being the only ones having single rooms, it was part of Jimmy's duties to wake him up every morning.

"Kaps, my alarm clock isn't working, do you happen to have a spare one, even if you don't use it?"

"I don't have any alarm clock," said Kapil. "But don't worry, I'll wake you up tomorrow."

"And who's going to wake you up?" asked Jimmy skeptically.

"Oh, I'll wake up on time," said Kapil comfortably. "When was the last time you had to shake me awake?"

Yesterday, Jimmy was tempted to say, but he was most awfully sleepy, and didn't want to press the matter.

"Right," he said. "Don't get up later than six thirty, else we'd have to hurry, and I hate rushing about in the morning."