Sandcastles | A Virat Kohli Fanfiction

07 • the greenlight

Virat's POV

Putting on the team jersey, I made my way down to the field for the toss when Bunty shouted my name from the spectators' wing.

"Cutest watermelon on the earth!" he said and everyone who heard that looked at me and my attire as if staring a monument. I giggled sarcastically and stepped on the grass that matched my shoe border.

It was indeed going to be a very important match. We needed to win three matches in a row to reach the playoffs or we were out of the tournament.

Taking forward the sapling to the pitch for our Go Green initiative, I heard someone from the hosts mumble "Let's hope a change of jersey colour brings a change of fortune for RCB. Looks like they need a lot of it." He was right though. But I didn't give a hang.

McCullum had good luck over the toss and chose to bowl first.

Gayle and I walked down shortly. The stadium was all green with red patches at random spots. I gazed around, sideways and towards the drone that swung over the pitch knowing that it telecasted me directly to where Kavya would be watching from.

I never thought of cameras that way. I wasn't nervous. I just somehow believed that today we were going to rock. That we were going to do something quite close to impossible. I just knew it.

On the first ball of the second over, I got enough room to free my arms with a swing for a short ball and slashed it just over backward point for a four. After a couple of boundaries, one from each of us in the next over, Gayle got a thick inside edge and the ball just clipped the top of leg stump after a bounce, enough to dislodge the bail and thereby, losing his wicket.

Instead of naturally feeling anxious over such an early and major loss, I felt even more potent. Partly because I saw AB's legendary figure making its way down the pavilion and partly because I just trusted myself more than ever at that instance.

With a lot of risk-running, going down on knees for impossible slog-sweeps, having occasional eye-contact conversations with Danielle, and with a splendid faith in our partnership, AB reached the hundredth bar completing a quick single. The crowd reverberated just 3 letters - "A B D."

The nineteenth over was indeed a long leap for our scorecard. I went from 65 to 95 in those six balls - pitching up four sixes and slamming a four along with a risky double followed by an "ohh" from the crowd.

We were already 233 with just one loss by the beginning of the last over. AB promptly gave me the strike from the second ball.

And as I tonked the third ball straight and full down the ground for a six, time seemed to have slowed down. Suddenly, the chants of my name, the applause and every other noise that surrounded me seemed to have lowered to an extent that it sounded like a mere melody to a greater voice. The voice of a girl that oozed not from the air but from the blood that was then being pumped into my veins.

Taking off my helmet, I stretched my arms and punched in the air. AB walked to the middle of the pitch and we shared a hug almost celebrating the anticipated victory in the following innings.

The meaning behind her words unveiled before me then. Maybe she asked me to believe in the light within me when she said "Gatsby believed in the green light" and maybe she herself had faith to foresee this moment of the present when she said, "tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther."

I knew she was watching me right then.

The bowling innings were incredible and we won the game! The dressing room had lit up with all smiling faces that carried the prospects of still having survived in the tournament. The consecutive failures were all out of everyone's mind and all we looked forward to was how to retain our name in the top 4.

I switched on my phone as soon as I got on the team bus that retreated to our hotel, expecting with all hopes for it to ring with the awaited call. And it did ring!

"KAVYA?"

"Arey waah! Bina sune hi pehchaan liya?"

"Gatsby did run faster today."

"Is Gatsby tired then?"

"Not at all. He can still play one more match right now."

She laughed at that. And I imagined her laugh - how her eyes would be shining in the 9 pm moonlight that would presumably pass through the panes of her living room window as she giggles staring distantly and then blinking for seconds; the same moonlight that touched my glasses splitting through the bus window. I sensed a mysterious happiness.

Her voice brought me out of my imagination, and at the door of her fancies.

"The sky looks happy, doesn't it?"

"And kaafi romantic bhi, nhi?"

"Tum phir shuru ho gaye?"

"Khatam hi kab hua tha jo phir shuru ho jaaunga?"

"You ate cheese or something?"

"Too lame. You should just leave the joking part to me."

"Ugh! Get lost."

I smiled so wide after hearing that that the driver who had been looking at me from the back-view mirror all this while couldn't help but laugh at me being my stupidest self. I moved my head in a way to actually say "aage dekh na bhai" but he didn't stop looking at me every other minute.

We went on talking like that about every possible random thing that somehow forged its own depth and clueless meaning till I reached the hotel, the elevator and then finally my room.

I can't recall it vividly - as to how the call ended. If I said good night first or she did, or if we just slept like that mumbling like kids. In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt.