The Dressing Room Of Eden Gardens

On, On Our Last Legs

That pain was the only feeling in the world which should be called breathtaking, was Laxman's personal hypothesis. Nothing else, actually physically snatches your breath away, causing your chest to constrict, your throat to convulse desperately trying to suck in some air. Pain did. He forces himself, every second, to breath around it. To keep breathing around it even though all he wanted was to curl up on the ground until the sensation numbs. To cry out, each time his back flares, burns as it is forced to move. But he doesn't. He can't let the Aussies catch a hint of his weakness. Because Sourav had put his trust on him, because Rahul kept whispering another ball each time they met in the middle. He couldn't let himself go here. Here there was no one to catch him should he fall. He needed to focus, focus through the pain.

It was an interesting study, the way this pain only was helping him center himself, ground himself. It was helping him focus, the sharp awareness that rose from overstimulation causing him to be that much more aware of everything around him. The wicketkeeper yelling out instructions, the jibes they were throwing at both of them but more so at Rahul. The smell of dust, because it was a dry, hot day and there was only dust in the air. Pain was causing him to overcompensate, to be sharper. He doesn't know what to do with this information.

He doesn't bother pondering upon it either. As soon as he reached the dressing room for lunch, he collapsed onto the couch face first, gasping with pain as he finally let his stringent control over himself, go in the safety of the room. Dazedly, he watches his team, readily waiting with icepacks. He can hear Rahul argue deliriously for chilled water. He can hear Minz snap at people, his experienced hands already working on his back.

But unlike out there, he doesn't need to keep it together here. He doesn't need to do anything here. Here he falls. Into waiting hands. Waiting safe hands, there to take care of him until he goes back out to fight for these very hands.

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Sourav forces the team to not crowd the entrance when his two warriors make their way up. Laxman had jogged his way to 170, Dravid was cruising at a fifty. They had played of a terrible session with Mcgrath, Warne and Gillespie steaming in, predatory gleam in their eyes. Others were thinking that they had saved a session. But as he watches his boys stagger in, as if on last legs, he thinks something else entirely.

Laxman collapses immediately onto the nearest couch with a hair raising gasp of pain that has Minz somehow scramble harder, screaming at all of them for their uselessness like an old Indian mother and icepacks soon are arranged around his calfs and thighs. Laxi lets him do whatever he wants, only gasping when fingers touch an affected spot. A glass of water with a straw is held near his mouth and he sips absent mindedly; a sharp contrast to the conversing, active player minutes ago on the field. He had been holding it in for long. Too long. Minz snaps at him when he tries to come closer though so Sourav turns the other way, towards the other batsman.

Rahul meanwhile had made beeline for the fridge, stumbling, trembling on his legs. Nitin, Minz's unfortunate assistant, had caught him before he can open it, "No, no you can't have-" he was trying to say, a glass of water in his hand. Sourav makes his way towards them.

"What's happening?" he asks.

Rahul turns towards him, making a heartbroken noise in his throat, "They won't give me water,".

Sourav looks at Nitin who desperately shrugs, "He wants cold water,".

"And what's wrong with that?"

"Temperature shock! His fever is going up from the sun already, it will fuck him up if he pours cold water on it,".

Sourav ahs like he totally understands it and takes the glass, the glass of cruelly warm water, "I will take it from here, go help Minz, man is going crazy,".

Nitin disappears instantly with a greatful look, passing Rahul's arm to him. Sourav takes a moment to consider his bestfriend. Rahul looks a little crazed, trying to weakly get to the fridge. Crazed, weakened but somehow his stubbornness hadn't taken a hit. For that Sourav was thankful. He has to bodily drag the man to a chair and force the water into his mouth, but he does it gladly. His eyes shine more as Rahul, like the absolute idiot he is, whines about icepacks burning his legs, warm water scratching his throat. Delirious with heat, dehydrating terribly but Rahul Dravid's spirit was blazing on. He glances at Laxman, the gasps of pain had died down so had the pained haze in his eyes. It had given way to the eyes of someone preparing his next assault.

Sourav smiles and looks back down at his bestfriend, frowning terribly at the TV journalists talking about his and Laxman's blooming partnership, mumbling something about liars.

With men like these he felt, they might not have saved a session, but the match itself.