Can't promise you the world, but... (A Rohit-Shreyas Fanfiction)

Chapter 9

2022

The middle order misfired badly in the Asia Cup. The whole team misfired, to be honest, and India didn't qualify for the finals.

Shreyas, who'd not been part of the squad, didn't allow himself to dwell much on it. One thing his mentors--one in particular--had always drilled into his head was that you couldn't control the chances you got, but you could control the efforts you put in...and you had to put in so much efforts and get yourself to such a position that the selectors were left with no choice.

So Shreyas practiced and practiced and practiced. He stayed in constant communication with his coach and tweaked his stance a bit to better suit Australian conditions in T20s, and ran all the advice he'd received from senior players in recent times through his head, and looked at the goal in front of him and practiced. 

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Even if India had not reached the finals of the Asia Cup, the last match had given Rohit a breathing space. Virat had finally scored a comeback century after nearly three years of drought, albeit against Afghanistan, and maybe the nosey journalists would finally shut the hell up.

They didn't care about how well Virat had been timing the ball, or how well he'd been playing lately--all they cared about was a century, mapping form to centuries, always centuries.

When he joined in the conference call with the selectors about the World Cup squad, Rohit was feeling a lethargic sort of aversion towards everything, in general. And it was not like he was deprived of sleep--for a change, in fact, he didn't feel sleepy. But when he reflected over the past few months, everything seemed to be going downhill.

Past year, if he dared to say so.

Constant injuries that never let him get a team he was fully satisfied with, the ordinary form of the ones he banked upon (including himself), the switch in captaincy that had taken a far greater toll on him than he'd ever let show, even to people like Ritika or Jinks or Mahi bhai, people questioning Virat's place everywhere he went, and now losing the Asia Cup in the run up to the World Cup...

He emerged from the team selection meeting with the same feeling, just like he'd expected: not fully satisfied. It was not like he'd differed with the team they'd ended up finalizing...but with the form and morale within, it didn't seem to Rohit a team that would win a World Cup.

He supposed to was being ungrateful.

He also supposed captains were ungrateful most of the time.

Since they were at the helm of things, they'd always look for that feeling of rightness even as they took decisions, and Rohit had rarely found that feeling of perfect rightness. And till they found that rightness, they were discontent with the team they did get--they were indirectly thinking there was something wrong with their team--which was so unfair on their team that Rohit felt guilty even letting the thought cross his head. 

It didn't help that the first question he had to face at the press conference after the final selection was about Virat. As usual.

What were people's problem with Virat?

Do you think he's suited to the modern T20 game? Do you think good performances in this one series, against Asian opponents, absolves him of his poor form over the past year? Do you think the management is basing too much of its faith on past records?

Rohit did not snap, which he should have felt proud about, but he was too tired to even snap. He answered the questions patiently, though neither their stance nor his ever changed--yes, yes he believed Virat Kohli deserved being in the team and no, he was not basing it on one Asia Cup, he was their best bet at winning anything, absolutely anything, because he was Virat Kohli.

His vice captain was waiting for him in the lobby when he returned from the press conference.

"How'd it go?" Rahul asked.

"Normal."

"Ah. Not a good standard, is it?"

"Could certainly be a lot higher."

Rohit returned Rahul's wry smile, grateful that his vice captain reacted the same way to irritating things as he did, unlike someone else whose vice captain he used to be, who would forcefully try to hunt for the positives rather than accept the negatives calmly, which only made things more irritating.

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Shreyas had just returned from walking his dog late afternoon when he got the notification that India's squad for the T20 World Cup had been announced.

Later, he couldn't say exactly what went through his head when he opened it and checked, but he could definitely say there had been hope, a lot of it, particularly with the way the middle order had played in the Asia Cup.

He went through the list twice, and the hope drained out all at once, leaving a huge hollow in its place.

His name was not there in the squad. Not in the 15-man squad, at any rate. 

Rohit Sharma (Captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Virat Kohli, Suryakumar Yadav, Deepak Hooda, Rishabh Pant (wicket-keeper), Dinesh Karthik (wicket-keeper), Hardik Pandya, R. Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Axar Patel, Jasprit Bumrah, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Harshal Patel, Arshdeep Singh

It was there in standby.

Standby players: Mohammed Shami, Shreyas Iyer, Ravi Bishnoi, Deepak Chahar

Standby.