Aravind Adiga - Selection Day

Pudgy little ‘Loser’ — Jamshed Cutleriwala, the world’s worst off-spinner — took five fat steps to his bowling mark; he wiped his forehead and got ready to bowl.

Manju examined the spinner’s body. All that jiggling fat.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Everyone wait.’

Manju walked to square leg, removed his chest-guard, and threw it at his feet; then threw his helmet at his chest-guard, and then, reaching into his trousers, pulled out the triangular box from around his underwear and threw it at his helmet.

Before he could get back to the crease, he heard a voice: ‘Put your helmet back on. Then put your centre pad back on.’

He turned around to see Javed right behind him.

‘Why?’ Manju asked. ‘When a real bowler comes to bowl, I’ll wear a helmet and centre pad. Not till then.’

‘Put the helmet back on. I told you his father died. Don’t insult him.’

‘I told you , I don’t care.’

Javed’s forehead expanded: a large vein stood out.

‘You and your brother still didn’t say sorry for what you wrote on my chest-guard,’ he whispered, gritting his teeth.

‘And we won’t ever say sorry for that,’ Manju replied. ‘And we’ll do it again after this match.’

He drove ‘Loser’s’ next ball to the extra-cover boundary, hitting it so hard it reached the adjacent field where another match was being played, and scored a four there too.

When it was ‘Loser’s’ turn to bowl again, Javed was on strike.

The first delivery was a full toss, but Javed did something strange with his bat that puzzled everyone, and the ball dropped dead. Even the umpire whistled. Manju licked his upper lip from this side to that, and from that side to this. Javed Ansari, nephew of a Ranji Trophy player, sophisticated newspaper interviewee, suddenly can’t hit a full toss.

Fat ‘Loser’ was walking to the top of his run-up; and though no one spoke, Manju thought he could hear a voice inside his head say, quite distinctly, ‘I’m going to get out now. Watch me, Manju.’

The next ball was a long hop.

Javed Ansari took a step back, his long white sleeves rippling as the bat’s edge struck the ball. Jamshed ‘Loser’ Cutleriwala stared at the ball’s arc, open-mouthed, before screaming:

‘Catch it!’

The fielder at mid-wicket, who for two days had been watching so many balls fly over his head, realized that this one was coming straight to him; he raised a pair of trembling hands. And then everyone was running up to him, except for ‘Loser’ Cutleriwala, who turned to the Ali Weinberg tent and made an obscene gesture.

Under the bougainvilleas, a voice grew ecstatic — I told you boys Jamshed could do it! Chauhan, hug the bowler for me! — Hug hug hug. Let’s get them all out in the next twenty minutes — Do it for your coach, boys. I’ve been sitting in the sun for two days.

THIRD DAY: MORNING

257–350 RUNS

A half-naked man, swinging a mallet, pounds a wooden cot to pieces near the Cross Maidan. Up goes the hammer: there it stops. He has heard a louder noise than the one he is making: it is coming from inside the maidan.

Setting down the mallet, he joins the spectators.

‘What’s going on?’

‘That little fellow has batted for two full days. This is the third morning. Still batting. He had a partner but that boy got out. This one goes on.’

‘What stamina. Imagine when he grows up.’

‘He already has a double century. He’s going to make 300.’

‘300? No, he’s already made 300.’

‘The short ones are always better. “Small frame, big fame.” It’s an ancient saying in our language.’

‘Which language is that?’

‘I’m from here, boss. Born and brought up in Mumbai like you. Or were you?’

‘Can we just watch the cricket, please? Can we just watch the cricket for once?’

More spectators gather. Contracting his sweat-oiled muscles, the labourer continues smashing the wooden frame; pausing only when his blows are again drowned out by those produced by the little man with the cricket bat.

THIRD DAY: TEATIME

351–450 RUNS

Tommy Sir was trembling. Not because of anything so crude as the fact that Manju, having broken his brother’s record for the highest score in Mumbai school cricket, was now all but certain to become the first under-18 in the city’s history to go past 500 runs in a single innings. No. He was trembling because to watch young Manjunath was to observe a remarkable fusion. See: in the old days of cricket there used to be good technique and bad technique. There was such a thing as proper footwork, playing within the ‘V’. But then the new cricket, twenty-twenty, American-style, came along. Bad technique became good. Batsmen withdrew their front foot. They lofted the ball in the air. They reverse-swept; they switch-hit. Now a batsman had to have two techniques, good and bad, and two cricketing personalities, traditional and maverick, and produce the right one on the right occasion: and this confusion undoes even the best batsmen — who loft when they should block and block when they should loft. But as Tommy Sir observed the continuing evolution of Manju’s batting, it occurred to him that this boy, who was switching at will between classical and contemporary footwork, between ‘good’ technique and ‘bad’, was fusing his two cricketing personalities into something new and flawless — and unprecedented in the history of Bombay cricket.

CLOSE OF THIRD DAY

FINAL SCORE: 497

At the close of the third day’s play, the Mumbai Sun had sent a reporter over to the Cross Maidan with a camera crew. Holding a mike to Manju’s face she asked:

‘What happened when you reached the 497-run mark, Manju? Why didn’t you go on?’

The boy’s gear was off him. His shirt was soiled; his hair was wet; but his body was dark and radiant with victory. Behind him his father stood with folded arms; and his lips were puckered as he listened to his son say, ‘I made 300, and then 400, and then 450. But I don’t know why I got out at 497.’

The reporter turned to the camera:

‘Manjunath Kumar just missed becoming the first school batsman in a hundred and fifty years of Mumbai school cricket to score 500.’

She turned back to the champion:

‘Manju, how do you feel?’

‘Satisfied. Happy.’

‘Happy that you missed the global record of 500 by just three runs?’

‘Unhappy about that.’

‘Do you want to play for Mumbai?’

‘I dream of that every day.’

‘Do you also dream about playing in the World Cup?’

‘Yes I dream about that every day too.’

‘Your brother is also a record-breaking batsman. Which of you is better?’

‘He has a secret contract with God, and I do not.’

•

Now she interviewed the father, on crutches (the victim of a tumble down stairs), who gazed into the camera, and said:

‘ Manjunath, my second child, is more complex. As a boy he used to eat stones and glass and other strange things. Chappals too. I had to work hard to make him a normal person. Shall I explain with examples? ’

As Mohan Kumar informed the world about his methods in nutrition and pharmacology, Tommy Sir came and sat down by Manju, who was looking at the sky. Tommy Sir scraped the side of the boy’s face with his fingernail:

‘Shave.’

It had happened to Tommy Sir before: the boys he was mentoring became men on his watch.

‘Looks bad on television, otherwise.’

Manju scratched the back of his neck and asked: ‘Where is Javed?’

‘Forget him. Everyone knows you’re better than Javed. The way he got out, it was ridiculous.’

‘Javed got out on purpose. The way he was batting, he would have made 500 first.’