The night before T Natarajan made his debut, he made a call home. It was to see his daughter on phone. His daughter is two months old but he's only seen her through the screen of his smartphone. Having taken the decision to stay back to help his team, it's a call he has made every day the last two months. Sometime this week, he will get to hold his daughter for the first time.
Mohammed Siraj had tears in his eyes on the morning of the third Test in Sydney. It was his father's dream that he play Test cricket. He realised that dream on the morning of the Boxing Day Test, but his father wasn't around to see it happen. While serving a hard quarantine in Sydney in November, Mohammed Ghous, after a lung ailment, had passed away. In the immediate aftermath, Siraj made multiple calls home to mourn with his family, through smartphone apps. Sometime this week, he will meet his mother for the first time since his father's demise.
When Shubman Gill left Amritsar to play in the Indian Premier League in the UAE, Punjab was a relatively happy place. His family was in a happier place. Since then, though, the farm laws have shattered that happy existence. Gill, who has since uploaded multiple Instagram stories to spread awareness about the plight of the farming community, must have worried for his father. Braving the icy cold winds that are a feature this time of the year in north India, many farmers from his state marched southwards to New Delhi in protest. Sometime this week, he will see his father in flesh and blood for the first time since those protests broke out at the back end of last year.
Karthik Tyagi checked into a hotel room to start his first hard quarantine at a hotel in the UAE in the third week of August. After performing admirably for Rajasthan Royals, he was picked to be a net bowler for the series in Australia. So he moved to another hard quarantine, his second, in Sydney. While the others competed, he did his thing in the nets. Then he went back to his room, ate quietly, facetimed his family. Even when the body count began to rise, while the others hoped, he knew there was no chance. Yet, he continued to toil to help them get better.
If Ajinkya Rahane wanted to work on his offside game, Tyagi fed him balls there. If Mayank Agarwal was unhappy with the way he was losing balance, Tyagi it was again who toiled away with him in search of answers. He has spent the last 80 days, playing just one first-class game. The other 77 days, he worked for the betterment of the others in this team. Every Indian cricketer who went to Australia came back after playing at least one game. He was the faceless man, toiling behind the cameras so his more illustrious compatriots could show off in front of them. Sometime this week, he can start thinking about himself again. When he was in the UAE, waiting to leave for Australia, he turned 20.
There are other stories, too, of the sacrifices the members of the Indian team made. Taking a step back, one can make the case for saying this makes their win against Australia perhaps an even greater achievement.
Thirteen of the 20 men who played in at least one Test have been away from their homes since August. Let that sink in. Sometime later this week, they will ring their house doorbells for the first time in five months.
What these guys have done over the course of the last five months is bordering on public service because they have spread joy to millions. Even as others had the opportunity to work from home and taking care of their near and dear ones, these men turned up for work, leaving behind their insecurities. Even as Chennai's mood music echoed that of an ambulance siren because of the coronavirus, Washington Sundar, who stays with his parents, and R Ashwin took to the field for their respective franchises. After months of reading about the situation on the news and constantly messaging their relatives on the phone, they can meet them soon. Some of them could have got Covid-19. Others may have lost their jobs. Some of them may have lost friends. Others may have been forced to sell property. Yet, they were there. Working without a break for close to 150 days.
Sometime later this week, they can wake up, have their morning coffee and not worry about attaching their bluetooth sensor. They can wake up and not worry about failing to meet Covid-19 protocols. They need not worry about correcting the tweet of a random politician on Twitter. They need not worry about Facetime not working. They need not worry about that unanswered missed call during a team meeting.
Sometime next week, though, they will all have to board a flight and come to Chennai. To enter into another bio-bubble.