(Not) Easy people to handle

Chapter 2

2023

To be fair, Nitish Rana had never been a very easy person to handle, and Rinku Singh knew that best of all.

To start with, when enraged, he had a voice had overpowered all, and he could shoot off a ten-minute rant in that voice without pausing for breath once. The rant, true to his roots as a boy being born and brought up in Delhi, would be none too polite. And then, if the other person at the end of the ten minutes tried to get in one word, he would stomp off so loudly that the people in the floor below would know at one—Nitish is in a rage.

Then, there were the things he got mad over. He was cranky when he was hungry. He was cranky when he was sleepy. He was cranky when he lost—even at Snakes and Ladders. He was cranky if anyone spoke ill of his friends in his earshot (even if that friend himself—often, Rinku—couldn't care less).

And if you gave him the tiniest incentive to combust when he was cranky, he would.

Within the first week of 2023's KKR camp, his teammates discovered that he was cranky simply when he was captain, too.

The first morning of practice, he yelled the ground down because half of them turned up late.

"You wouldn't have dared if DK bhai or Shreyas was captain, would you?" he asked VC menacingly.

"Shreyas himself would be late the first day," pointed out VC, perfectly truthfully.

"He—" Nitish changed tack. "And that's why you thought you should come late? I can see you, you know!" he barked at Narine, who'd come latest and was presently trying to sneak into the crowd unnoticed.

Venky, who had (he thought) perfected the art of dealing with Nitish's temper through a balanced mix of sympathy (I know they're idiots) and sense (but don't let them get to you), went quietly, "Make a bit of allowances on the first day, Nitish."

Nitish simmered down a little at Venky's calm I'm-with-you tone.

His next trigger was the less than satisfactory fielding as always happened on the first day of practice. Rinku was noting him swelling with irritation so warily that he dropped a slip catch, too.

"Are you here to fool around?" Nitish demanded.

"I only dropped one," Rinku protested half-heartedly.

"Are you supposed to drop even one?"

"C'mon, cap, everyone misses the occasional one," said Russell, who was protective of Rinku. "You dropped one a few minutes back, too."

"And how d'you know I'm not yelling at myself in my head, too?" thundered Nitish.

Rinku waved at Russell to make him back off and promptly took the well-meaning but stupid decision of poking Nitish into disclosing why he was in such a rage.

"Bhaiya," he said in a stubborn way. "What happened?"

"What do you mean what happened?" asked Nitish.

"What put you in this mood?"

Nitish flung the ball in his hand into the horizon.

"Good god," Chandu sir cried. "Take it easy, kid. We're not supposed to break things outside the stadium."

The ground erupted with laughter. Rinku and Venky sent apprehensive glances at Nitish, and to their relief, found that he was laughing hardest of all.

"If it takes him just throwing a ball to cool down, we've found a masterplan," Venky murmured to VC, but in Tamil, to be cautious.

"I think what put me in the mood is that we're playing at Eden after three years. Three years since the home crowd saw us," Nitish mused to Rinku later. "I hope my captaincy doesn't let them down."

"It won't," said Rinku.

"How d'you know?" demanded Nitish. "No, how do you know?"

Rinku was alarmed.

"Well, I trust you," he chose to say. Warily.

Nitish beamed. "Means a lot, Rinku."

Rinku heaved a sigh of relief.

"Did you, by any chance, skip breakfast before practice?" he asked cautiously.

"Yeah," admitted Nitish.

"And you couldn't sleep properly last night either?"

"Right."

"Please don't do that anymore, bhaiya," said Rinku, and left the or-we're-in-for-it implied.

_________________

It was likely Nitish didn't quite heed that advice. And his mood swinging from sky-high to soil-deep meant everyone was constantly on their toes.

The days KKR won—particularly the extraordinary ones like the ones against GT—Nitish would be the most cheerful of all, praising the team extravagantly in the post match presentation, hugging his teammates whenever he spotted them and constantly harping to anyone who'd listen that Rinku Singh could do anything.

(Once, they walked in on him explaining that to the liftman. Partly to spare the liftman, partly to make Rinku stop looking so mortified, Gurbaz and Venky had to gently lead Nitish away.)

Then, the days KKR lost close matches, he'd be their greatest motivator, even if he did persist with arguing with the umpire every single day about the over rate—KKR was, of course, at the bottom of the Fairplay points table.

But when KKR would lose without a fight, most often with the pacers letting the team down horribly, Nitish's temper would be taut close to fraying the next few days.

One of those days, he caught VC and Narine by the scruff of their necks. Suyash slipped away discreetly and was allowed to go: one of his privileges as the youngest member of the team.

"All you bowlers say is how this is a batsman's game," said Nitish. "Where when the whole batting line-up is off-form, one or two batsmen carry the entire team. And you bowlers—only concerned about your own four overs—when the fast bowling isn't working out, why can't you spinners do some damage control?"

Narine and VC were indignant.

"We're doing our best damage control," protested VC.

"Clearly, it's not enough!"

"We can't bowl more than 12 overs, you know—"

"THEN YOU KNOW WHY IT'S A BATSMAN'S GAME!"

"Yes." Narine nodded. "We do."

"No, we don't—you can bat!" VC told him.

"I identify myself as a bowler," Narine said gravely.

"Then control the damage!" And Nitish stormed off.

Suyash emerged from the bend of the corridor where he'd been lurking around out of sight.

"How do you control the damage further, VC bhai?" he asked.

"I don't know," said VC, annoyed. "Ask the captain."

Suyash laughed loudly.

"What's funny?" VC asked suspiciously.

Suyash stopped laughing.

"Oh," he said innocently. "I thought you were cracking a joke."