In Every Story of Mine (A Jassi-Hardik story)

The 'one family' crowd

It wasn't like the booing and the jeering hadn't started right from the moment Hardik had come down for the toss, but now they were ringing so loud, he could hardly hear himself think.

Not that he was thinking too much. He was, in fact, actively putting an effort not to think.

Had the decision of sending Rohit to field on the boundary been that horrible?

Why had he done it in the first place?—He couldn't quite recall, now.

Please focus, he begged himself.

He had the ball in his hand now, about to toss it to Piyush. His hand was visibly vibrating. What fresh nonsense was this again?

If the crowd were this hostile just at him interacting with Rohit on the field, imagine what the state would be if he mis-threw the ball to the bowler?

And it didn't help that his team was playing so miserably, on the verge of a sure defeat, and that he himself had bowled so awfully and contributed nothing with the bat, just like last match.

If only one factor would work out...

In the middle of Piyush's over, that one factor did put in a tiny glimmer:

Ishan, crossing him on the circle, gave him a small low-five and the kind of look he kept reserved for the few people, mostly Virat and Krunal and Hardik—and Rohit—that said, you're my number 1 guy.

That was the way Hardik and Ishan phrased it.

At least he was someone's number one guy the right way. He was pretty much all's number one from the reverse—he glanced around the roaring stadium and felt light-headed.

If he could focus on the one factor...that however much the world hated him, his own team didn't...maybe he could get through this match, and the next, and the next, and each of the upcoming twelve ones. A distant future, but maybe he could.

After the next ball, across the pitch, SKY gave him a tiny smile as fake as Hardik's own. They didn't have real smiles anymore in this team. Then, he automatically glanced at Jassi at mid-on, which unconsciously he'd probably been doing the whole innings—as unconsciously hoping for those tiny gestures of solidarity.

Jassi, however, was too busy looking around the stadium most of the times and didn't particularly look at Hardik, except when they discussed something between overs, yelling at the top of their voices to get themselves heard about the jeers.

Hardik felt a little pang, but it was nothing much. Jassi had never been an expressive person anyway.

In the eighteenth over, when MI was staring at a defeat, Jassi went for runs, too.

When Hardik jogged up to him to discuss the field setting with him after the fourth ball, Jassi looked mutinous.

"Next match, just ask Rohit bhaiya about the bowling changes, will you?" he said.

"Yes—" said Hardik hastily. "Yes, I will."

Jassi was already walking to take his run up, like he didn't much care about the reply anyway.

Even Hardik himself didn't care about what he said, or what he did, because what difference was it going to make?

_________________

You can't get scared, Rohit had said at the end of the previous match.

After MI had lost their first match of the season, Hardik, who didn't know what to do, had done what he always did when he didn't know what to do: go and hug Rohit.