when 77 met 32 [ishman ff] [shubish]

2025

Third person's POV:

Shubman was snapped out of his memories when he heard his phone ringing. "hello. Haan bhai." he received the call. "acha. Aata hu." He said and then the line from the other end ended. He got up to freshen up and leave immediately.

On the other side Suhani, virat, rohit, hardik and abhishek were sitting together in a room. "so, you are telling me that the people from the same team are deliberately being sacked??" hardik asked, shocked at the revelation. "that's right." "you'll were trying to find the mole all this time?" virat nodded at that. "did you find him?" "haa bhai, tabhi idhar baith ke bhajan karre haina?" virat snapped. I mean it was a dumb question but can you blame hardik for the brain freeze?

"sorry bhai. So, the situation with Ishan is related to this?" "we think it is." Suhani said. "what are we going to do about it then? Any clues? Suspicions?" hardik asked. "the only clue we have are the records of people constantly getting off the team without giving any proper reason. There has to be some big fish behind it but the big fish can't be around 24/7 so there has to be some small fish also. Someone amongst the team. If we can get to this small fish, we can definitely get to the bigger one."

"we have the names of the people with us. They could talk to us tell us what happened but they aren't talking. They are scared of something. Even the people who had left cricket years ago and now leads a different life refuses to talk. This person has a hold on each one of them. There is something he holds against them. This person is not easy to deal with and right now I can see no stepping stone taking us to him." Suhani finished.

"what if we get to know the about person doing it? What after that?" hardik questioned. "everything starts with the question 'why'. if we get to the person we would also get to the reason. and once that happens, some way we can do something. But the answer to why is important for that." It was Suhani again.

"it scares me to think that there is someone amongst us playing a spy on us. Betraying us." Hardik said and everyone agreed with it. It was scary indeed. They were leading in the dark, one mistake and the consequences would be bad. "are there any suspects?" hardik asked again. "apart from the people in this room, everyone is a suspect." Suhani replied, and even if the answer was expected, a shiver ran down all of their backs.

"can we really not trust anyone at all?" virat asked. "Look I am placing my best bets on you guys. No one can be completely trusted. And even if they could we can't tell about this to a lot of people because then the word will get out." "can we trust you?" hardik questioned. His question was very much valid honestly. "that would be your choice." Suhani replied rather calmly.

After a lot of thinking hardik decided to speak again. he seemed to have made his mind over something. "I too want to share what I know. Since we can't completely trust anyone, I would like to place my bets on you people also." Hardik said which got a blossom of smile from the members. "but I have a question before we do that." "go on." It was rohit this time.

"why have we not included shubman in this?" he asked. And everyone looked at Suhani. "at first I did not want to alert shubman because of some half ass information. He was depressed enough. But then Rishabh told me something about how shubman was deliberately trying to show the world that Ishan getting off the team is affecting him and how he refused to have anything to do with the management. Deliberately inviting trouble."

"it made me think. Why would shubman do that? So yeah, he could have completely different reasons to be doing it but I can't check him off the suspect list until I know why he is doing that." Suhani said shocking hardik even more. "why? what do you mean why? he is acting affected because he is affected. Shubman would be the last person to do anything to be hurting Ishan."