“Mayank Yadav ek Indian player hai. Avesh Khan Indian player hai. Mohsin Khan, woh bhi India khel sakta hai. Sachin Tendulkar ka ladka Arjun bhi hai. Tera number kaise padega?” The extended pace pack at the Lucknow Super Giants camp had rattled Ram Niwas Yadav in ways his son’s IPL contract the previous year had not. He’d counted the names aloud. He knew what each one meant. Sitting in the corner of the living room on a rainy April afternoon, Ram Niwas holds his chai without the weight he used to carry. His cousins Surender and Vikram have settled in around him—the family punctuated by his long absences at work. “Ab khush hai,” he says quietly, as if checking the truth of it by speaking. There had been reasons not to be. A former ASI from the Railway Protection Special Force, Ram Niwas had spent his career away from home. He knew what absence did. He knew what it meant to miss the small days. And when Prince told him, at eighteen, that he would …