The door knocking

Chapter 5

On the morning of the match against MI, Nitish was mournfully holding court at the breakfast table to Rinku, Mavi and Pat about how it used to feel when he was on the good side of IPL's most lopsided head-to-head records of all times.

"There'd be a spring in everyone's step, just the opposite of the slump in ours. The kind the Indian team would feel while going to play against—say, Afghanistan."

"You don't say our team is as—er, ordinary—as Afghanistan is in world cricket!" Pat protested.

"Not overall, no," said Nitish. "Just this disease against MI."

"What d'you mean, disease?" the captain's voice broke in out of the blue.

"Er—figuratively," said Nitish, as his companions sent apprehensive glances at Shreyas, who was now settling down beside Nitish.

"What does the figurative disease represent?" asked Shreyas, seeming at ease.

"An inferiority complex, you could say..."

"Against MI? Nonsense—just 'cause they've won titles doesn't mean they're undefeatable—"

Nitish couldn't find any trace of moodiness in his demeanour that morning.

Encouraged by that, no doubt, Mavi began to say, "Delhi has one of the most even head-to-heads against MI, doesn't it?"

Since you didn't have to be a genius to notice how Shreyas' face clouded over whenever DC was mentioned, Pat kicked Mavi under the table and said, "How are you feeling today, skip? Venky said you were under the weather earlier."

"I'm all right," said Shreyas grouchily, "and do your Aussie teammates call you skip, Pat?"

"Um," said Pat. "Yeah, they do often, to be honest."

"D'you like it?"

"Never thought of it," mused Pat.

"I think Shreyas bhaiya means he'd rather not have you call him skip," Rinku ventured.

Again, you didn't have to be a genius to figure that out, reflected Nitish, but neither Mavi nor Rinku were the brightest of souls.

"I'd be annoyed, too," Nitish told Shreyas. "It'd make me feel alienated."

"Hmph," said Shreyas.

_______________

That evening, Pat scored the fastest IPL fifty and quite literally dug MI's grave, and the joy in the KKR camp was mad.

Anyone would think KKR had never defeated MI in history, or that defeating MI was as good as winning a final to them.

Shreyas listened to the impromptu war chants, a wild mix of Hindi, Tamil and Caribbean, and watched the ill-choreographed victory dance, and could not help thinking that maybe these weren't bad people to hang out with.

So when Russell came dancing over to offer Shreyas a hand to pull him into the thick of it, Shreyas found himself saying, "You're doing the step wrong," and jumping up to correct him.

And that night, he performed his first card trick in a month to a very admiring audience of Mavi, Venky and Umesh.

______________

Shreyas woke up late the next morning feeling more positive that he had in ages.

Rohit bhaiya was right—if he had to have any peace, he would have to move on from DC and put in a bit of effort to get to know his teammates in KKR. Just because he'd not managed to stay on in the team he loved didn't mean his new team was evil.

They were quite nice, really.

He'd have to put in an effort, that's all. And he'd start with one of the senior players—maybe Russell, himself, or Narine. Someone who'd played for KKR pretty much forever.

By the time the practice session came around, he had his whole speech ready. He'd repeated it in his mind several times, and was quite confident he'd be able to deliver it without faltering. Not to mention how proud he was at having come up with it in the first place.

He came across Narine first.

"Hi—Sunil," he started, fixing a tolerable smile on his face.

Narine stopped in his trial run up and turned. "Hi," he said.

"I—I—just wanted to say—since you're KKR's oldest player, almost synonymous to the franchise—I wanted to tell you that I do want what's the best for—our—our team. As captain—"

Narine was studying the sky. Shreyas felt compelled to look up at the sky, too, in case there was something unusual.

There wasn't.

So he recollected his speech and continued.

"—as captain, I hope you know you're all free to approach me at any point, just like I'd discuss with you if I felt anything's wrong—"

Now Narine was studying the ground. Shreyas looked at the ground.

There was nothing but a caterpillar slithering by on the grass.

Shreyas had to recollect his last line, the one he was proudest of.

"—so that we could carry forward the legacy of this team, which has had one of the best IPL captains in history."

Shreyas stopped.

Narine looked up from the caterpillar and nodded.

Once, twice.

Then he rolled over his arm again, taking his mark.

And Shreyas was, obviously, devastated.

_________________

This was it.

Everyone in the team hated him. Hated him.

It had been such a carefully crafted speech. It had been bound to melt anyone unless they hated him.

Which Narine clearly did.

And if Narine, with whom he'd had minimum ungracious interactions hated him, the others most definitely did.