Victoria Park, by Anand Kerai

An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.

Rain came over Victoria Park at half past two, and the eleven of us crowded into the pavilion, which was really a hut with ambitions. We were ninety-one for four, chasing a hundred and forty, and nobody said so out loud.

Raj did not sit down. He never sat down when things were going badly; he went round the room instead, like a man checking the windows of a house before a storm. He retied Hitesh’s pad straps without being asked. He took the last digestive from the tin and broke it into three for the youngest boys. He looked at the scorebook for a long time and then closed it gently, as if it were asleep.

‘Forty-nine,’ said Dilip, who could not leave a number alone. ‘Off how many overs?’

‘Enough,’ said Raj.

He was twenty-four and worked nights at the hosiery factory on Frog Island. Most Saturdays he came to the ground straight from his shift, with the lint still in his hair, and bowled twenty overs without complaint. We had made him captain because he was the only one of us the opposition were slightly afraid of. He had never once raised his voice. I think that was why.

The rain eased to drizzle. The umpires came out to stare at the sky, and Raj went with them, his hands in his pockets, nodding at whatever they said. When he came back he stopped in front of me.

‘You’re in next, Vinod.’

‘I’m number nine.’

‘Today you’re number seven.’ He said it lightly, but he held my eyes until I nodded. ‘Their fast man is tired. He has been bowling like a man walking home. Play straight and he’ll give you four balls an over to hit.’

I wanted to ask why me, when Prakash and Hitesh were both better. I did not ask. Nobody asked Raj things like that.

A wicket fell in the second over after the restart, and I walked out into the wet grass feeling my heart hammer against the borrowed pads. Raj was at the other end. He did not come down the pitch to give me advice. He simply tapped his bat twice on the crease, which meant, I understood later, that he had seen my hands shaking and had decided not to mention it.

We made the forty-nine with an over to spare. I scored eleven of them, all ugly. Afterwards, in the hut, Raj shook my hand formally, as though we had met at a wedding, and then went outside to help the groundsman drag the covers.

He was back at the factory by nine.

What impressions does the writer create of Raj? How does the writer create these impressions?

You must refer to the language and structure used in the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.