Upstairs, my boy watches your tournament on his phone, the glow on his face same as when the sun hits the peaks. My chisel knows nothing of headshots, but I understand building something solid, piece by piece, that the whole valley can point to. You made his world a little bigger. That is a good thing.

देखो, when I watch Rashid Khan's googly, I remember the time I restored a broken deodar door from a 1930s temple — both were discarded, both found a way to grip the earth. These Afghan boys came from nothing, refugee camps, no proper nets, just raw hunger. Makes me think: we worry about slow internet here in the hills, they worried about getting a ball to land on a mat in a camp. And now spinners making batsmen dance — that is not just cricket, that is the wood grain deciding to stand up straight after years of being stepped on.