"You concussed, dude?" Shikhar asked Jaddu with a grin, as he came into the dressing room where the physio was tending to Jaddu's hamstring, full of news.

"Concussed?" asked Jaddu. Then his face lit up as he realized that he'd conveniently been hit on the helmet in the last over. "Oh, great! Virat's idea?"

"Nope, Rahuliya's," called Virat. "Got hidden depths, that boy of mine."

"I just gave you a brilliant idea, can you not call me by that name for a while?" said Rahul, and without waiting for an answer, asked Jaddu, "You need to convince the referee you're concussed, you know."

"Leave it up to me," said Jaddu grandly. He rearranged his features into one of convincing dizziness.

"Good," said Virat approvingly.

"Thanks, Ro," said Jaddu, dazedly.

Hardik exploded.

Virat sent them both a stern glance.

"Don't fool around," he warned Jaddu. "And I'm not Ro."

The referee came up after a while to ask Jaddu the fixed set of questions.

"You are...?" he began with.

"Me?" said Jaddu. "I'm Ravicha—"

With Hardik sniggering out of sight, it was quite likely Jaddu would've said Ash's name, but the captain and vice captain were glaring at him over the referee's shoulder, so he changed track midway and said softly, "Ravindra Jadeja."

The rest of the questions were just as obvious ones, and Jaddu answered them dutifully, but with the hint of dizziness that made Virat extremely proud, Yuzi extremely admiring, and Hardik extremely disappointed since he hadn't shot back any ridiculous answer.

********

Yuzi conveniently won Man of the Match, and even managed to not smile a single time during his interview. Coming back, he rushed to the invalid ('cause by now Jaddu's hamstring was declared genuinely injured, even if not his head) and said with exaggerated generosity, "I'll share this with you, Jaddu bhaiya, it belongs to you as well!"

"Don't try to be noble Yuzi, it doesn't suit you," said Shreyas swiftly.

"That's what I was thinking, too," snorted Jaddu, trying to feel a little less disgruntled about his injury.

"Here, Aga, meet the hero!" said Hardik, who'd been on video call with his family. He brought the phone over to Jaddu and said, "Sir Ravindra Jadeja!"

"Hello Aga," said Jaddu, solemnly, though he was grinning. "Want to see a swordfight?" he said, and snatched away Rahul's bottle to perform a nice swordfight as he always did on video calls with him. Hardik's kid being the only boy among their kids, not counting Zoraver, who had openly refused to be trained in swordfighting, Jaddu persisted in 'training' Agastya.

He seemed to like it too, because Jaddu had him roaring with laughter within moments, which he never did when Hardik tried to make him laugh, thought Hardik with a scowl.

In spite of the video call, there was less laughter in the ride to Syndey than was expected.

Somehow, their team's funny twist of rules seemed to have fallen flat despite the victory, despite four people's birthdays coming up in the next two days, because their till-then 2nd best batsman would have to sit out for the rest of the series.

**********

With an hour to go for Jaddu's 32nd birthday, Hardik put down his phone after his second video call with his wife and son in two days, feeling unnaturally pensive.

For a long time he sat in his room, trying to put his finger on what exactly what it that was bothering him. Initially he thought that it was because he was missing Natasha and Agastya, but something told him that that was not it.

For some reason, he kept thinking back to Jaddu making his son laugh over the phone in the bus in his typical-Jaddu fashion, and he wondered why that was making him so wistful.

Inevitably, the answer came to him.

Jaddu's first series since his first child was born, in fact the series during which his first child was born—Champions Trophy 2017—had ended with Hardik lashing out at Jaddu in the worst possible manner he could've thought of, and as he just realized, he had never even apologized for it.

No new father deserved what Jaddu had faced after that run out, and even if social media and stuff could be ignored, no one deserved a teammate blaming him like that.

Why had it taken him three and a half years to realize the sickness of his act? wondered Hardik.

Was it because he was a father, too, now? Or was it because in this series he and Jaddu had been constantly fighting lone battles together, just like that long-ago day in 2017?

Why was he brooding like this? thought Hardik, suddenly horrified. He didn't brood. He didn't feel all guilty and emotional, like, ever.

Then why was he, today, all of a sudden?

***************

"Jaddu!"

Jaddu looked up in surprise to see Hardik slinking into his rom half an hour before he'd expected (obviously, he had expected his team at midnight).

"Got an idea of a new prank?" he asked, grinning.

"Uh," said Hardik, pulling up short. "Not exactly, no."

"Ah, ok," said Jaddu. "You want an idea of a prank? Who's the victim, since Kuliya isn't here?"

Hardik was suddenly uncomfortably aware that Jaddu would be stunned to hear why he had come. They might find lone battles on the field, but off the field they were almost always goofing aroung, breweing up trouble and pranking people. It wasn't Jaddu's fault that he expected a similar routine today.

For a moment, Hardik contemplated on pretending that he had come to plan a prank on—say, Jassi, but instead he found himself blurting out, "Actually I came t apologize to you, Jaddu."

"Apologize to me?" Jaddu made no attempt to hide his astonishment. "Why on earth?"

"For—for—" stammered Hardik. "for my words after the final against Pakistan."

Jaddu stared at him, still more astonished, and Hardik quickly continued, his eyes averted.

"I know I'm reacting three years late, and I'm sorry for that, too. It took me so long to grasp that what I'd done was sick, you'ce done so much for the team, Jaddu, and I of all people had no right to pretend the fault was all yours."

Jaddu, predicatably, could think of no words to reply to that. Anyone else would've accepted the apology with nice words, thought Jaddu, but his brain had just gone blank.

"I feel so proud of you lately, I don't know why," said Hardik in a gruff, low voice, not looking up. "Maybe because...I know you'd fought alone for India several times before, but my first lone fight in a losing cause was with you. I shouldn't've said any of the things I did. I didn't mean any of them, Jaddu—I'm ao sorry."

"You're—you're like a younger brother to me, Harry," said Jaddu finally, and awkwardly. "You don't have to apologize...that day...it was like a nightmare for us all...I—I never held it against you."

"Oh," said Hardik. "Thanks, I guess."

They still could not meet each other's eyes, because this was so completely an unfamiliar territory for both of them.

Jaddu wondered if he should break the silence with a goofy comment, but somehow Hardik's childish and earnest apology had left him feeling all funny—and unable to think of a goofy comment.

Thankfully for both of them—because there's only a certain limit till which Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja could sit in emotional silence—the clock struck midnight, and a roaring team descended onto the corridors to take the birthday boys to the common room.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY JADDU—JASSI—SHREYA!" yelled Virat the the top of his voice, effectively waking up every poor soul in the hotel who had been sleeping.

"DON'T CALL ME SHREYA, AT LEAST ON MY BIRTHDAY!"

"Ah," said Rahul sympathetically. He, of all people, had experience in that field.

"Where's Jassi? Don't tell me he has dared to fall asleep!"

"I WISHED JADDU FIRST!" howled Hardik in triumph, as he grabbed Jaddu's arm and dragged him out to face the army in the corridor.

"Why were you in his room?" said Rahul, instantly suspicious of a prank.

"No prank this time, Rahuliya," assured Hardik.

"You don't expect us to believe that, do you?" said Mayank. "Never mind, we'll all be extra alert!"

"If Jad and I planned to prank you, we'd succeed irrespectively of you gullible idiots being extra alert," said Hardik arrogantly.

"Luckily for you, this time we haven't," said Jaddu with a kind of mellowed grin by his standards.

Hardik looked at him and grinned back before they went to hammer on Jassi's door.

🤭