November 22, 1974
Srinivas Reddy came home with a smile that threatened to split his face in two. He smelled of sweat and victory.
He placed a small envelope on the low wooden table as if it were a religious offering.
"Two," Srinivas announced, his chest swelling. "KSCA Stadium. West Indies versus India. The First Test."
Lakshmi looked up from the stove, wiping her hands on her sari. "Srinivas... how? The price..."
"I traded the double-border crimson silk," he said quietly. "To the merchant in Chickpet."
Varun, sitting in the corner playing with a piece of twine, froze.
He knew that sari. It had taken his father three weeks of back-breaking labor. Three weeks of the shuttle flying clack-thrum-clack from dawn until the kerosene lamp flickered out. It was meant to buy rice for the next two months.
"It is history, Lakshmi," Srinivas argued gently, seeing her worry. "Varun needs to see the giants. He needs to see the world outside this lane."
Varun felt a heavy stone settle in his gut. He traded a month of food so I can watch a game I hate.
The guilt was suffocating. Chuck Thomas had thrown money around like confetti—buying rounds at bars, leasing cars he drove once. But this... this two-inch strip of paper ticket cost more blood and sweat than Chuck's Porsche.
"I will go," Varun said in Kannada, his voice solemn. "Thank you, Appa."
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The Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) Stadium was a concrete bowl filled with noise.
It wasn't like Safeco Field. There were no cushioned seats, no Jumbotrons, no sushi vendors. There were just slab concrete steps baking under the merciless Bangalore sun.
Varun sat on his father's shoulders, a handkerchief tied around his head to ward off the heat. He was nearly four years old, small for his age, but his eyes scanned the arena with the critical detachment of a veteran pro.
"Look at the pitch," Srinivas pointed to the strip of brown earth in the center of the green oval. "It is a turning track, they say. But the West Indies... they do not care for spin. They bring fire."
Varun squinted.
He saw the players warming up.
The Indian team looked... normal. They were men of average height, wearing floppy white hats, stretching politely.
Then, the West Indies walked out.
Varun's breath hitched.
They were athletes. Real, terrifying athletes.
Clive Lloyd, the captain, walked with a stoop, but he was massive, six foot four, with shoulders that spanned two time zones. Gordon Greenidge looked like he was carved out of mahogany.
And there was a young man, chewing gum with a swagger that screamed 'Major League'. Vivian Richards. He walked like he owned the grass, the stadium, and the title deeds to the city of Bangalore.
Okay, Varun thought, begrudging respect flickering. They look the part. But can they play?
The match began.
Varun expected the slow, gentle lobbing he had seen the neighborhood boys do.
Instead, he saw Andy Roberts.
Roberts was the spearhead of the West Indies pace attack. He didn't just run up; he stalked. He started from a mark that seemed to be in a different pin code. He accelerated, a rhythmic, silent gathering of momentum.
At the crease, he exploded.
The arm came over. The wrist snapped.
Whoosh-THWACK.
The ball hit the wicketkeeper's gloves with a sound like a pistol shot. The keeper took it at shoulder height, standing twenty yards back.
"Jesus," Varun whispered in English. He could barely see it.
That wasn't 70mph. That was 90-plus.
And the batsman?
Varun leaned forward, gripping his father's hair.
The Indian batsman was wearing white trousers, a white shirt, pads on his legs, and gloves.
Where is the helmet? Varun's mind screamed. Where is the face guard?
He was facing a hard leather rock traveling at highway speeds, and his only protection for his skull was a cloth cap.
The next ball, Roberts banged it in short.
A bouncer.
In baseball, throwing at the head is a declaration of war. The benches clear. Punches are thrown.
In cricket, it was a tactic.
The ball reared up off the pitch, hissing as it cut the air. It was aimed squarely at the throat. The Indian batsman contorted his body, arching his back like a limbo dancer, staring death in the face as the red blur whistled past his nose.
The crowd roared. "Bowled! Well bowled!"
"He tried to kill him!" Varun yelled, horrified. "That's a beanball! Eject him!"
"It is a test of courage, Varun!" Srinivas shouted back, his eyes shining. "If you cannot play the short ball, you cannot play at the highest level!"
This was no picnic. This was Russian Roulette with leather.
He covered ten yards in three strides. He dove, full extension, parallel to the ground, and snatched the ball one-handed, inches from the turf. He rolled up and threw down the stumps in one motion.
Then he watched Clive Lloyd. Lloyd fielded at the covers. An Indian batsman hit a shot that looked like a certain boundary. Lloyd moved.
"Out!"
Varun sat back, stunned.
He knew that athleticism. He had seen it in Ken Griffey Jr. He had seen it in himself.
These weren't old men in sweaters.
This was the West Indies. They were the Harlem Globetrotters of violence. They played with a calypso rhythm but executed with the ruthlessness of a hit squad.
Then came the batting.
Gordon Greenidge took the strike.
Varun watched with the Bradman Template humming in his nervous system. He analyzed the mechanics.
High backlift, Varun noted. Like a baseball load. He waits... waits...
The Indian spinner tossed the ball up.
Greenidge didn't just tap it. He stepped forward, cleared his front leg, and swung.
CRACK.
It wasn't the ping of metal. It wasn't the dull thud of a washing bat. It was a sound dry and crisp, violent and beautiful.
The ball rocketed along the ground. The fielder at cover dove, but the ball burned the grass, hitting the boundary rope before the man hit the dirt.
"Four runs!" Srinivas cheered.
Varun watched Greenidge dismantle the attack. He saw the power. He saw the way Greenidge drove the ball back past the bowler with enough force to break an ankle.
The Historical Weight
"Who are they?" Varun asked his father during the tea break, his voice quiet.
"They are the Windies," Srinivas explained, sharing a packet of spicy peanuts. "For a long time, the white man beat them. But now? Now they have found their fire. They are becoming the kings of the world, Varun. Australia is strong, with the Chappell brothers and Lillee. But the West Indies... they are frightening."
Varun looked at his own small, brown hands.
He looked at the Indian batsmen struggling to survive against the pace. They were brave, but they lacked... dominance.
A thought crystallized in Varun's mind. A terrifying, arrogant, wonderful thought.
I know how to hit a fastball.
He had spent his previous life tracking sliders and 98mph heaters. He knew the timing. He knew the weight transfer.
If he could apply baseball mechanics to this game... if he could bring the power hitting of the Major Leagues to a sport that prioritized defense...
He could break this game.
He could buy his father a house. He could buy his mother a silk sari that she didn't have to weave herself.
The match ended for the day. The sun dipped, casting long shadows across the concrete.
Varun climbed down from his father's aching shoulders. He looked back at the green oval one last time.
He didn't see a slow, boring game anymore.
He saw a battlefield. And he saw an opening.
"Appa," Varun said.
Srinivas looked down, wiping sweat from his brow. "Did you like it, Kanna?"
"Appa," Varun said, his Kannada clear and decisive. "I don't want to weave."
Srinivas's smile faltered slightly. "Weaving is our caste, Varun. It is what we do."
"No," Varun pointed at the pitch, where the groundsmen were rolling the heavy machinery. "That is what I do."
He looked up at his father.
"Buy me a bat. A real one. I will pay you back. I promise."
Srinivas looked at his son. He saw the intensity in the boy's eyes, a look far too old for a four-year-old. He saw the hunger.
He sighed, knowing it would mean extra hours at the loom, perhaps fewer meals for himself.
"Okay, Varun," Srinivas whispered. "We will find a bat."
Varun took his father's hand.
Chuck Thomas is dead, Varun thought as they walked out into the chaotic Bangalore traffic. Long live Varun Reddy.
And somewhere deep in his neural pathways, the Bradman Template stirred, whispering a single word of approval.
"Good."
November 22, 1974 (Evening)
The bus ride back to the weaver's colony was a suffocating crush of humanity. Varun sat on his father's lap, his head resting against the window, watching the streetlights of Bangalore streak by like tracers.
His mind was still on the pitch. He was replaying the mechanics of Andy Roberts' delivery stride. The kinetic chain. The release point.
"They're too fast, Appa," Varun said quietly, staring at his reflection in the glass. "The Indians... they look scared. They back away from the stumps."
Srinivas sighed, shifting to protect Varun from the elbow of a standing passenger. "Most of them are, Varun. It is natural. Who wants to be hit by a stone traveling faster than a car?"
"But you can't hit if you're scared," Varun muttered. "In baseball... I mean, in sports, fear makes you stiff. Stiff muscles are slow muscles."
"There is one who is not stiff," Srinivas said. His voice changed. It lost the fatigue of the weaver and gained the reverence of a priest. "One man."
"Gavaskar?" Varun asked. "The guy everyone was screaming for?"
Srinivas smiled. "Sunil Manohar Gavaskar. The Little Master."
"You are too young to remember '71," Srinivas said, his eyes unfocused, looking back three years. "We went to the West Indies. To their home. No one gave us a chance. We are India. We are the land of spinners, not fighters. Or so they thought."
Srinivas leaned in close to Varun's ear, lowering his voice over the roar of the bus engine.
"Gavaskar was a boy. Just twenty-one. Smaller than you will probably be. And the West Indies bowlers... they are giants, Varun. Hall, Griffith, Sobers. They looked at this little Indian boy and thought he was a snack."
"What happened?" Varun asked, despite himself.
"He didn't wear a helmet," Srinivas whispered. "He wore a floppy sun hat. He chewed gum. And he scored seven hundred and seventy-four runs."
Varun's baseball brain stuttered. 774 runs? In one series?
That was a statistical anomaly. That was video game numbers.
"He hooked them," Srinivas said, miming the shot with his hand. "They bowled bouncers at his head to kill him, and he stood on his toes and hit them for four. He didn't back away. He leaned in."
The Song of Respect
The bus hit a pothole, rattling teeth, but Srinivas didn't stop.
"Do you know, Varun? The West Indians... they are proud. They love their fast bowlers. They love to see stumps fly. They usually laugh at opponents."
Srinivas looked at his son intensely.
"But they did not laugh at Sunil. They stopped the game to applaud him. They love him more than they love their own batsmen. He is the only one they respect. Because he stood in the fire and did not burn."
Srinivas began to hum. It was a strange, rhythmic tune, bouncy and foreign to the Bangalore bus.
"There is a song," Srinivas said, tapping a rhythm on Varun's knee. "A Calypso. In the Caribbean, Lord Relator wrote a song just for him. Can you imagine? A black man singing the praises of a boy from Bombay?"
Srinivas sang softly, his voice cracking slightly with emotion, trying to mimic the Caribbean lilt he'd heard on the radio.
"It was Gavaskar...
De real master...
Just like a wall...
We couldn't out Gavaskar at all, not at all..."
Varun listened to the lyrics.
"You know the West Indies couldn't out Gavaskar at all."
A shiver went down Varun's spine.
Chuck Thomas had won awards. He had heard fans chant "Chuck! Chuck!" when he hit a homer. But nobody had written a folk song about him. Nobody had immortalized him as a "Wall" against death.
"He has no power," Varun critiqued, trying to hold onto his skepticism. "I saw him today. He pushes the ball. He deflects it. He doesn't smash it."
"Power is cheap," Srinivas countered. "Viv Richards has power. But Gavaskar has technique. Technique is armor, Varun. Technique is what allows a small man to survive a war."
The Template Stirred
Technique.
The word echoed in the void of Varun's mind.
Deep in his subconscious, the Bradman Template stirred. It didn't speak words this time. It provided an image.
A mental projection of a batsman, not Gavaskar, but someone else. A man standing perfectly still. The ball coming down. The bat coming down straight. A perfect, impenetrable defense.
"If you don't get out," the dry Australian whisper drifted through his thoughts, "you can always make runs later. Value your wicket, son. It's your life."
Varun frowned. That went against everything Chuck Thomas believed. Chuck believed in swinging for the fences. Strike out or Home Run.
But looking at his father's glowing face, seeing the pride Srinivas took in a man who simply refused to yield, Varun understood something fundamental about his new country.
India didn't need a slugger yet. They needed a survivor. They needed someone who could take the pain and keep standing.
"Okay," Varun said, resting his head back on his father's chest. "Gavaskar is good."
Srinivas laughed, hugging him tight. "Good? He is God, Varun. But maybe..."
He paused, looking down at his son's small, determined face.
"Maybe one day, you will play like him."
"No," Varun said in English, closing his eyes as the bus trundled into the darkness. "I'm going to hit it harder than him."
"What did you say?" Srinivas asked.
"I said... teach me the song, Appa," Varun lied in Kannada.
Srinivas smiled and began to hum again.
"It was Gavaskar... De real master..."
Varun listened, but in his head, he was already modifying the lyrics. He was imagining a future where the West Indians didn't sing about a Wall.
He wanted them to sing about him
He wanted them to look at a small Indian boy and feel the same fear they inspired in everyone else.
Just wait, Varun thought, gripping his phantom bat. Just wait until I get my hands on a bat