The roar of Eden Gardens was no longer sound
It was pressure.
It pressed against Arjun Malhotra's skull, seeped into his bones, vibrated through the handle of the bat clenched in his hands. Ninety thousand people. Floodlights burning like artificial suns. A nation holding its breath.
India needed six runs off one ball.
The bowler stood at the top of his mark—tall, fast, foreign. Sweat dripped down Arjun's temple, but his eyes were calm. Too calm.
This wasn't his first time here.
It was his last chance.
Arjun had given cricket everything—childhood, youth, love, health. He had broken bones and records in equal measure. But fate was cruel. Injuries. Politics. One wrong year. One wrong selector.
This match—this final—was supposed to be his redemption.
The bowler ran in.
The world slowed.
Arjun saw it all—the seam, the wrist position, the fraction of imbalance in the bowler's stride.
Yorker. Attempted.
He smiled.
The bat came down like judgment.
CRACK.
The sound was perfect.
The ball flew—not just over the boundary, but into legend. A straight six, clean as truth, soaring into the Kolkata night.
For half a second, the world exploded in joy.
Then—
Pain.
A sharp, tearing pain in his chest.
Arjun staggered.
The bat slipped from his hands.
The crowd's roar twisted into confusion, then fear, then screams.
He collapsed on the pitch—the same pitch that had once been his temple.
Above him, the lights blurred.
So this is how it ends, he thought, oddly calm.
No regrets.
Just… unfinished dreams.
His heartbeat slowed.
Darkness took him.