Aravind Adiga: Selection Day

But the upper half of the steps glittered like Christmas tinsel.

Emerging from the tunnel, and about to cross the road to Azad Maidan, he stopped. Manju had spotted him — the boy he saw every Sunday, but who wore a different face each time.

The average cricketer.

Today, it was that fellow staring at the footpath as he dragged his bag behind him. Wearing a green cap and stained white clothes. Fourteen years old or so. Talking to himself.

‘… missed. Missed by this much. But the umpire … blind. And mad, too …’

From his side of the road, Manjunath grinned.

Hello, average cricketer.

This was the wreckage of the first match at Azad Maidan — this fellow who was half a foot shorter than he had been at 7 a.m., who was blinking and arguing with the air, cursing the umpire and the bowler and his captain and their captain, and growing shorter every minute, because he knew in his heart that he had never been meant for greatness in cricket.

Hauling his kitbag off his shoulders and lowering it to the pavement, Manju unzipped the bag and extracted his new bat: he held the black handle in both hands, and gripped tight.

And waited.

The average cricketer removed his green cap and raised his head, and the eyes of the two boys met.

Manjunath Kumar showed him how to drive through the covers. He showed him how to attack, defend, and master the red cricket ball.

After which, like W.G. Grace, he stood with his weight on the bat handle. And then stuck his tongue out and rolled his eyeballs.

Across the road, the green cap fell onto the pavement. Goodbye to you, Prince Manju waved to the average cricketer, and goodbye — Prince Manju turned to his left, then to his right — to all average things.

I am the second-best batsman in the whole world.

•

‘Stop right there. We were talking about you last night. I said, stop.’

The silhouettes of the Municipal Building and the spiked dome of the Victoria Terminus struggled against the morning smog, and the air in between them was scored by cable wires. Blue smoke rose from the garbage burning in a corner.

Between the buildings and the burning garbage stood a fat man, trying to catch Manjunath like a football goalie.

‘Come back, boy. Come back at once.’

With a grin, Manjunath surrendered, and walked back to where Head Coach Sawant stood.

‘Did you hear what I was saying? I said, we were talking about you last night. “We” means two people. So, who was the other man talking about your future? Ask me.’

Instead of which, Manju, drawing a hand from his cricket bag, showed the coach something.

‘What is this?’ Sawant asked, as the boy handed him a disturbingly large page of the Sunday newspaper.

‘Please, sir. What is the answer?’

Sawant took the Paradox in both hands. His brain struggled with High School physics and his lips with Newspaper English.

… place a glass of boiling water in …

‘I have no idea, Manju. No idea at all. Take it back. Manju,’ the coach said, ‘why have you brought this to cricket? Is there no one at home you can show this to? What about your—’

‘My mother is away on a long holiday, sir.’

As Manju folded his precious piece of newspaper and tucked it into his cricket kitbag, Sawant studied him from head to toe, like a man wondering if he has made a bad decision.

‘Tommy Sir was the other man talking about you. You know what it means if he takes an interest in a boy.’

But Manju had flown.

‘Hey, Manjuboy! Come over here!’

Twenty other young cricketers stood around a red stone-roller with ‘Tiger’ written twice on it. They had been waiting for him.

‘Chutneyboy! Look at the chutneyboy come running.’

‘Chutneyboy who wants to be a Young Lion. Come here!’

It was a court martial: a boy was holding up one of those new phones that were also tiny television sets, and Manju was told to stand on the stone-roller, while the circle tightened around him.

As Manju rose above the circle of white, Sawant, hands on his hips, walked around the stone-roller for a better view.

The boys were making Manju watch, as a woman reporter aimed a mike at a tall teenager, handsome enough in every other way too, but whose eyes, cool grey clouds, were like a snow leopard’s.

‘Chutney Raja! That’s what they call your father, Manju. Chutney Raja!’

‘You heard them on TV. My big brother is a Young Lion.’

‘Chutney Raja SubJunior! All you’re good for is your science textbooks. What do you know about batting?’

‘Thomas, today I’ll hit you for three fours one after the other. Then, I’ll hit you for three sixes. What did you say about my father?’

‘He’s a Chutney Raja.’

‘And what is your father then?’

‘Your brother is Chutney Raja Junior. That makes you—’

YOUNG LIONS

‘Join us in the quest to find the next generation of sporting legends!’

You can see from these images that Radha Krishna Kumar has grown up in what some would consider less than ideal conditions, at the very edge of Mumbai. His father is a variety-chutney salesman, whose main business is his sons. In his own words:

‘We have a family secret which makes us superior to every other cricketing family in the city of Mumbai. There is a secret blessing given to my son Radha by the Lord Subramanya, who is our family deity …’

(Secret from God? Shit. Your father really is mad.)

(Ashwin. I heard that. Two fours!)

‘Mr Mohan, is it really true that your son got Sachin Tendulkar out in a practice match or is that just a story?’

‘There is a saying in our language: he who steals a peanut is a thief. He who steals an elephant is also a thief. This means we do not lie in matters big or small. Radha Krishna clean bowled Sachin Tendulkar with his fourth ball.’

(This is true! This really happened!)

(Shut up, Chutney Raja SubJunior! And why is your brother called Radha? Isn’t that a girl’s name?)

Radha Kumar has the status of a superstar in his neighbourhood. We spoke to his neighbour, Mr Ramnath, seen here in front of his ironing stand.

‘Dahisar was famous, they used to shoot films here before the river became dirty. The moment I saw Radha, when his father brought him here over ten years ago, I told my wife, this boy will make Dahisar famous again.’

YOUNG LIONS

MONDAY 6.30 P.M. REPEATED ON WEDNESDAY

Follow us on Twitter

•

Enough! Flailing his arms, Manju scattered his tormentors from the stone-roller: time for real cricket, at last.

‘… SubJunior! Get ready to bat!’

‘Oh Champion of Champions!’

A drum-beat had begun at the far end of the maidan. Padded up, helmeted, and swinging his bat in circles over his head, Manju walked up to the crease.

At noon, he was still batting. Manju Kumar had kept his word to the bowlers, punishing each one of them in a different way for what they had said about his father (and about his brother having a girl’s name), lofting Thomas over mid-wicket, driving Ashwin twice through the covers, and cutting, pulling and flicking the others.

Pramod Sawant stood, arms folded across his chest, and watched Manju: passing over the boy’s dark, eye-heavy face, pointy chin and solitary pimple, and then over his shoulders and biceps, to settle on the crucial part of a batsman’s body. In Australia they bat with their footwork. In India we do it with our wrists. Manjunath Kumar’s forearms in action made his coach’s mouth water. Dark and defined cunning, those forearms were broader than the biceps; they were a twenty-five-year-old man’s forearms grafted onto the body of a four-foot ten-inch child; they were forearms which, as they petted, coaxed, and occasionally bludgeoned the hard red ball to the boundary, made Head Coach Sawant remember, with a shiver, the muscular man in black shorts who had come to his village with the travelling circus three decades ago.