Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

“Well done, Swami,” I said. “Good show.”

“Indeed,” said Ballard. “Let’s see that off-break of yours.” And with that he tossed the ball to me.

So I took the ball and walked up to the wicket, swinging my arm over, and the action was unfamiliar and stiff. I marked out a run, and the ground was edged by trees, and I thought, I’ve been away a long time. But I steadied myself, and the umpire lowered his arm, and I trotted up and tried it, but the ball was wide and the batsman (one of William James’s friends, a banker I believe) drove it confidently past me, to the boundary at mid-on for a four. He was pretty damn elegant about it too.

“Never mind, yaar,” said Swami. “Get the length.”

I did, too. I gave away another four runs at the end of that over, and then two or three more in the next, but after that I began to settle and I found that I could turn the ball, and I began to enjoy the effort, and it was nothing spectacular but I began to bother them a little. But Swami, he was performing wonders, he hung the ball so long in the air that it seemed to be gliding, reluctant to come down, and it floated and it dipped and it swerved along, and sometimes on the bounce he would spin it, turning it to leg and sometimes he would flip it with top-spin, and the wickets tumbled. In his third over he took one more, and in the next he got two. I just pegged down the batsmen from one end, and from the other he went through them like an executioner, all with a downward-looking smile and shy little shakes of his head. I could see William James standing on the patio now, shading his eyes, and when the next batsman came out he walked with him a little way into the field, talking into his ear urgently.

So we went on, and they got runs, mostly from me, but their middle-order batting pretty much collapsed, and we had them at sixty-nine for seven. William James still didn’t come in, I could see his point, he wasn’t going to be bothered to put on the pads for the likes of us, and they were only four runs away from victory anyway. The next batsman came in, looking grave, and as he marked his guard I tossed the ball to Swaminathan and chanted, “Bedi, Bedi, Bedi.” By now I loved the man, and I was calling him by the names of the heroes of my childhood. Bedi had been one of a trio of spinners, a heavy-set Sikh who bowled devious leg-spin that charmed the batsmen into error.

But William James’s teammates were scared of Swaminathan now, and they were sticking to the crease, playing defensive strokes and refusing steadfastly to swing at the delicious-looking lobs he floated down the pitch. On the fifth ball of the over he bounced it a little short, and the batsman stepped out to drive but it rose suddenly, took the splice of his bat and went sweetly right back into Swaminathan’s hands. The next fellow who came in was young, sweating, and red in the face, and when I called to Swaminathan, “Prassana, Prassana, Prassana,” he looked at us suspiciously, as if we were plotting something unfair and probably unconstitutional. Prassana was a fat off-spinner, you remember, a South Indian who looked sleepy and harmless until his break caught you flat-footed and stupid. Swaminathan bowled, the hero at the crease stepped up to it quickly and let fly with a tremendous swing, he was tense and he wanted to catch it before it bounced and he was seeing visions of a triumphant sixer and strawberries in the pavilion, but it was moving in the air, it was zigging and zagging and performing mysterious perambulations, and with all his strength and his probably good eye he caught it only a glancing snick and it squirted to square-leg, where Ballard sprinted for it, but both batsmen were nearly half-way down the pitch and they decided to dash for it, the runner was safe but the other batsman was still a good two feet from the crease when Ballard tumbled the stumps with a clean and fast throw.

So we had them, almost. Four more runs to make and one more batsman left, and it was of course William James. I could see him standing on the grass near the pavilion, his hands on his hips, and he still didn’t have his pads on. Behind him I could see his wife, the cool blond hair above a white dress. He turned around quickly, and I could feel his anger, and then we had to wait while he put on his pads. Swaminathan walked over and gave me the ball, and then he massaged my shoulders. He didn’t, of course, have to say that it all depended on me.

William James came in, settling a blue cap on his head, it had a Confederate flag on it. As he went by us Swaminathan thumped me on the back, walked away, and then called back to me, “Chandrashekhar.” William James looked up, and his gaze was clear and icy, he looked from me to Swaminathan, and he was furious but collected.

“Chandrashekhar,” I said, and William James glared at me, and I laughed. I mean he probably thought we were speaking to each other in some foreign language, or maybe practicing some kind of dark Oriental magic, because Swaminathan was now chanting, Chandrashekhar, Chandrashekhar.

Chandrashekhar was my favorite of the spinning triad, the three gods of the slow ball. He was thin to the point of weakness, and as a child he had suffered polio, which had deformed his right arm, twisted it inwards, and so with it he practiced the art of deception, he bowled googlies, off-breaking with a leg-break action, and I remembered batsmen who watched his arm come round, and who confidently unleashed cover drives, only to find they had been fooled, what had looked like one thing had really been another, that Chandrashekhar’s thin twisted arm was capable of lying. But now William James was flexing his wrists at the crease, he meant to hit my delivery straight to the boundary, and Swaminathan was whispering, Chandrashekhar, Chandrashekhar, but I had never bowled a googly in a match, I didn’t have the crippled arm, and William James was watching the ball, his eyes were fixed on my hand, my grip on the seam, he was coolly analytical, he was going to know what I was doing as soon as I did it, before even, he had me down his eyes were telling me, he was going to count me and calculate me and predict me and knock me out of the park. He was shifting his weight on the balls of his feet and he wasn’t worried, no, not at all. So I took the ball and started my run, holding it behind my back, and I was saying as I ran, Chandrashekhar, Chandrashekhar, my arm came over and William James was watching, and instead of releasing the ball I dropped my wrist and held on and when I let the ball go my arm was turned, I could feel the wrench in my shoulder, the back of my hand was facing the ground, and it wasn’t much of a ball, William James came out to it hungrily, he was glad and happy and I could feel it, it dropped desultorily and he set himself for it and he swung, he was going to drive it over my head for a flight to the moon, he was going to murder it, but the ball hit the ground and he knew it was going to break to leg but it didn’t, it turned the other way and he swung through empty air and then he was looking around curiously above my head. He wanted to know where the ball had gone.

“Chandrashekhar,” Swaminathan screamed, and there was a great shout of laughter, and William James looked around slowly and his middle stump was out of the ground and lying flat. After that I was surrounded by players patting me and hugging, and when I finally struggled my way through them William James was still staring at his stumps, he turned and looked at me with clear hatred. He pivoted on his heel even as I walked toward him, holding out my hand, and he stalked back toward the pavilion without a word.

“Doesn’t like to lose,” Ballard said. As we walked off the field, me holding my arm, which was starting to ache, he went on, “Around these parts he’s known as a bit of a hanging judge. But he’ll come around.”