The GOAT of Cricket

*January 16, 2017 | Sydney, Australia*

---

The Sydney skyline, draped in hues of twilight, cast long golden shadows across the sandstone walls of the Indian team hotel. From the 18th floor balcony, the view stretched endlessly across the Pacific, the sea dark and thoughtful, like a memory.

Ishaan Verma sat at the small desk inside his hotel room, a sheet of paper before him, pen in hand. The glow of his maiden Test series victory still hummed around him, but tonight, his heart reached far beyond the borderlines of cricket.

He uncapped the pen. The ink bled gently onto the paper.

---

**Dear Papa,**

I don't know if they deliver letters where you are.

I don't even know if you read them.

But I write anyway.

Tonight, I'm in Sydney. We beat Australia. 3-1.

We broke the Gabba.

We raised the trophy.

I scored runs in all four Tests. Four centuries. One fifty.

They gave me a silver plate for "Player of the Series."

But I wish I could give it to you instead.

Because you made this.

Every knock on the garage door. Every midnight net session. Every scream when I left a straight ball in U-14s.

You said, "Legacy isn't statistics, Ishaan. It's persistence."

You didn't get to see any of this.

But you're in every single moment of it.

---

**Scene: Reflections from the Field**

Ishaan paused.

Outside, the city buzzed. Inside, memory whispered.

He thought of the SCG crowd. The boos. The silence that followed. Then, the applause.

He thought of Cummins.

And that handshake.

---

**Dear Papa,**

You would have loved Pat Cummins.

He's fire and precision. Not just a fast bowler. A fast thinker.

He bounced me out once. Rattled me. Broke my rhythm. But he also made me better.

He made me dig deeper.

When he bowled two beamers in Sydney, I knew it wasn't malice.

It was a man on edge.

A man losing grip to a rising tide.

You used to say, "The ones who test you the most, shape you the most."

Cummins shaped this version of me.

He made the Sydney hundred possible.

When he shook my hand after the match, it wasn't just a gesture.

It was an acknowledgment.

And for a second, I think I saw a younger version of you in his eyes.

---

**Scene: Pressure and Solitude**

Ishaan looked at the reflection of his face in the windowpane.

Still flushed from applause. Still fresh with doubt.

---

**Dear Papa,**

Pressure isn't the crowd.

It's silence in the dressing room after you fail.

It's not making eye contact with teammates after a duck.

It's journalists framing your story before you even live it.

But somehow, in that chaos, I found calm.

Do you remember the pink ball you gifted me on my 12th birthday?

It was stitched like a secret. I held it every night before zonals.

That same color flew into the crowd when I hooked Cummins in Adelaide.

The game is louder now. Brighter. But my reasons are still quiet.

I play because you taught me to love it, not survive it.

---

**Scene: Conversations with Kohli**

He thought back to the words Virat said after his hundred.

"You've just replaced fear with belief in every young Indian."

It stayed with him. Longer than the applause. Longer than the trophy lift.

He scribbled more.

---

**Dear Papa,**

Kohli said I replaced fear with belief.

But honestly, I still fear.

Every time I walk to bat, there's a voice in me asking if I'm enough.

Every press conference, I wonder if I'll say something wrong.

But belief isn't the absence of fear, right?

It's playing anyway.

---

**Scene: A Childhood Memory**

The night before his U-16 state trial, Ishaan had almost not shown up. He'd feigned a stomach ache.

You saw through it.

You tied his laces yourself and drove him to the ground.

"You don't have to be fearless, Ishaan. Just honest."

He wrote those words now.

---

**Dear Papa,**

You'd be proud of how I walked out at 27/2 in Sydney.

They booed.

They called me overrated.

And I didn't answer them with words.

I answered with a bat. And patience. And one perfect on-drive.

The crowd went quiet.

Not in defeat. In awe.

I didn't silence them. I changed them.

And that's the real win, isn't it?

---

**Scene: A Room Full of Jerseys**

Around the hotel room, Ishaan had hung every match-day jersey from the series.

Adelaide. Melbourne. Brisbane. Sydney.

He walked to each one. Touched the fabric.

He reached for his Sydney jersey. Tucked into the inner pocket was a note:

> *"Bravery isn't the roar. It's the silence between the roars."*

He smiled. That was you. Always you.

---

**Dear Papa,**

I don't know where this road ends.

But I know who started me on it.

And I know what I carry in my kitbag isn't just gloves or pads.

It's the echo of your voice.

It's the smell of leather ball on a rainy Sunday.

It's the memory of you clapping on a plastic chair, even when I didn't score.

They call me a prodigy.

They say I'm the next legend.

I just want to be someone who made you proud.

And maybe, made a few kids in Kanpur believe they could do this too.

Goodnight, Papa. Keep watching over me.

From Sydney.

Your son,

Ishaan.

---