EZ777: The Queen That Won No Points and Took the Title

1. EZ777: I Won the Last Board and Lost the Final

The last black carrom man fell cleanly. My partner raised his hand toward me, then lowered it before our palms met.

I had won the board. Asha and Javed had won the championship.

My name is Mohan. I was forty-seven that evening, captain of a club I had spent twelve years teaching other people to call disciplined. Across the board sat two players I had removed from our doubles lineup because they refused to keep proving their commitment by carrying equipment after everyone else went home.

The scoreboard showed why my final clearance had changed nothing important. They had begun the eighth and last board of the deciding game ahead, twenty-four to twenty. Asha had taken the queen and covered it. At their score, the queen added no bonus to their own total. It also could not add three points to mine.

When I finished, two of their white men remained. My two points brought us to twenty-two. The eight-board limit ended the game at twenty-four to twenty-two, and the match at two games to one against us.

People remember the rebound Asha used to cover the queen. I remember the pause before it, when she looked at the score and chose to pursue a red piece that was worth no points to her.

I had spent years describing her as a useful worker. I had not understood how much of the board she could see.

2. Commitment, According to Me

Asha was thirty-six and worked in a medical records office. Javed, forty, repaired industrial sewing machines. Their practice hours were difficult to align, which made them punctual about the hours they did have.

I treated that punctuality as something I owned.

If a visiting team needed boards unloaded, I called them. If a fixture ended late, I asked them to lock the cupboard. Our strongest singles players could leave because they needed rest. Asha and Javed were expected to stay because, as I liked to say, teams were built by people who did the small things.

One Sunday, after winning our only doubles match in a heavy team defeat, they said they could not remain to move six boards upstairs. Asha had already exchanged shifts to play. Javed had a repair appointment he would miss if he stayed. They had told me both facts before the match.

I told them everybody had excuses.

When Asha asked why the other players could not take a turn, I called the question an attitude problem. Two days later, I announced a new doubles pair. I praised the replacements for commitment while Asha and Javed stood beside the cupboard waiting to collect their own strikers.

Javed asked whether their results had been discussed. I said results were not everything.

I meant the sentence to end the conversation. It did. Asha took her striker case from the shelf, handed me the cupboard key and walked out with Javed. Their practice booking disappeared from our calendar that night.

3. A Pair Without a Room

For several weeks, I heard that they were playing wherever somebody could spare a board. I considered this evidence that leaving us had been foolish.

Later, when we analysed the final, Javed showed me the list of rooms they had tried. A community hall was too noisy on market evenings. A small office had space but no reliable table height. A residents' room allowed two sessions a week, provided they packed everything away before the next booking.

They chose the residents' room and did the packing themselves. The difference was that the work had an agreed end and belonged to everybody who used the room. A third member brought the board. A fourth checked the lights. Nobody earned the right to leave by being more famous than the others.

Their first independent tournament was poor. Asha missed two queen covers. Javed overhit a rebound and sent the striker into a pocket, paying the relevant due under the rules. They lost in the opening round and carried their board back through a corridor full of celebrating strangers.

At our club, somebody showed me the result. I said they had discovered the difficulty of doing everything without proper guidance.

I did not see the next three mornings. Javed had adjusted his appointments. Asha had found an earlier bus. They used those mornings to replay the failed covers before work. Each successful attempt was followed by a change of angle. A shot that worked only from the remembered position was not enough.

4. The Red Piece and the Number Beside It

Their practice records were more demanding than the gossip I received.

They set up queen situations with different scores written beside the board. At some scores, taking and covering the queen could add three points when they won the board. At twenty-two or more, their own queen bonus was unavailable. But the location and ownership of the queen could still change what the opponents were able to score.

They also practised finishing badly. By that I mean positions in which their own remaining men were awkward while an opponent had a short clearance available. They could not always prevent the opponent from finishing. They could sometimes limit the points the finish would produce.

Asha learned to distinguish a direct route that was genuinely open from one that looked open until the striker's width mattered. Javed built rebound drills with the white man moved a little after every attempt. They recorded whether the contact was too full, too thin or simply too hard.

Their arguments became specific. Javed wanted to attack a blocked white first in one position. Asha wanted to secure the queen before the opponent's next turn. They played both plans from all four seats. One worked from her baseline and failed from his. The difference changed the order in which they prepared their shots.

None of this reached me as a threat. I heard that they spent a whole morning on covers and imagined nervous players repeating their failures. They were learning which failure would cost one point and which would cost a match.

5. The First Time They Made Me Watch

We met again at a regional doubles event in Surat. My partner was Pranav, thirty-nine, a calm player who could make a difficult straight shot look like routine paperwork.

Asha and Javed were on the other side of the draw. I watched them only because our semifinal finished early. Their opponents were good at preserving congestion, leaving awkward pieces near pockets so that clearing one colour opened the other side's route.

Javed did not attack the crowded area at once. He took a direct white, then another, leaving the next attempt for a position with a better angle. When his turn ended, Asha had to survive the intervening opponent's play before she could use the new route. She did. She secured the queen, covered it and kept her next stroke controlled enough to leave a playable final white.

They won that match in three games. The deciding game went to the eighth board, where they checked the score before choosing between a direct finish and a more ambitious queen plan. Their choice was correct for the position and the limit.

Afterwards, I congratulated them with the tone of a man approving a former employee's progress. Asha thanked Pranav for lending them a powder brush earlier. She gave me a brief nod and turned back to Javed's scoresheet.

They were not trying to make me jealous. That was more difficult to bear. There was work to discuss, and my opinion had stopped being the centre of it.

6. I Took the First Game

The final began well for us. I won the toss, settled into my preferred rhythm and attacked their awkward white men by choosing clearances that left useful blocking positions behind.

Pranav played beautifully. He covered a queen from a difficult angle and twice recovered a board after I failed to finish. We won the first game twenty-five to sixteen. Asha's shoulders tightened after the last stroke. Javed gave her the striker case without offering a speech.

I expected their next game to begin with haste. Instead, Asha used the opening board to establish a simpler rhythm. She stopped trying to force a rebound when a direct white offered a better first contact. Javed adjusted his striking strength to the board instead of insisting on the speed he had used earlier.

We still made them work. Pranav built one long clearance around a queen cover, and I won a board by keeping my last black protected until the correct angle arrived. The second game stayed close.

At twenty-one against twenty-two, we needed a strong board. They needed three points. Asha and Javed finished with three of our black men still on the board; the queen, already dealt with earlier in that board, gave them no additional bonus at their score. Those three points took them to twenty-five.

One game each. I was annoyed, but not frightened. We had won the first game clearly and nearly won the second. I told Pranav to keep making them play the difficult shots. He nodded, then asked me to stop watching the spectators.

7. Seven Boards of the Decider

The deciding game began with their five-point board and our seven-point answer. They responded with eight. We took six. They took six. We took seven.

After six boards, the score was twenty to nineteen in our favour. The alternating results had made the room restless. Each pair could build a commanding board; neither could keep the other quiet for long.

On the seventh, Javed's break gave them possibilities but no easy finish. I took two blacks and missed a third whose line narrowed beside a white. Asha used the change to clear a direct white, then handed the turn over after a controlled miss on a difficult one. The normal order of play continued. Nobody could promise that the board would survive unchanged until a partner returned.

It did not. Pranav opened part of the centre with a successful shot. Javed used the new opening, secured the queen and covered it. When they cleared their last white, two of our black men remained. They had started that board at nineteen, so their covered queen added three points to the two remaining blacks.

Five points put them at twenty-four. We remained on twenty.

The eighth board would be the last if neither side reached twenty-five first. A winning board of five or more would give us the game. A smaller board win could leave them ahead at the limit. I looked at the red queen in the centre and began planning the five points we needed.

Across from me, Asha looked at the same queen. She was planning how to stop me getting them.

8. A Queen Worth Zero to Her

Late in that final board, Asha and Javed had three whites left. We had three blacks. The queen remained unclaimed.

Their whites were inconveniently placed. Two would require awkward contacts from the next available seats. Our blacks offered a more promising finish if we could get another useful turn. From twenty points, a queen bonus plus two remaining whites would take us to twenty-five. Without the queen, those same two whites would take us only to twenty-two.

I pocketed a black that had partly obstructed Asha's view of the centre. It was the correct beginning of my available clearance. My next black required a difficult cut; I missed narrowly, leaving the position alive. The removed black had opened a line visible from Asha's baseline that had not existed from mine.

She studied the queen and the white she would need for cover. Taking the queen alone would settle nothing. If she failed to cover it on the next stroke, the queen would return to the board under the rules, and my chance to claim its bonus would remain.

A spectator whispered that she was already on twenty-four. She knew. Her score was the reason for the plan, not an objection to it.

Asha sent the queen along the newly open direct line and into the pocket. Then she repositioned her striker for the cover. The white could not be taken by the same straightforward route. She had to use a cushion to approach it from the useful side.

Javed sat still. He could not play the stroke for her. I watched the gap she had chosen and remembered how I had mocked their mornings spent practising covers.

9. The Cover I Could Not Undo

The striker touched the cushion and returned toward the white. The contact was controlled, neither the desperate slap I had expected nor an overcareful touch that would die before the pocket.

The white fell. The queen was covered.

Asha's next attempt at one of the two remaining whites missed. Play passed on. Pranav worked through the blacks left to us, using a straight shot before attempting the more difficult one. He pocketed one and left the last for a line he could not quite complete. Javed tried to clear their awkward white and missed. My turn arrived.

I had one black left. They still had two whites. I could pocket my last man; I could not make the queen become ours by doing so.

I checked the board and the score because a captain should do both even when the conclusion hurts. There was no sensible route to three extra points hiding inside the position. Asha's cover had removed it. I took the black cleanly.

The umpire awarded us two points. Twenty-two to their twenty-four. Eight boards completed. Asha and Javed won the deciding game, twenty-four to twenty-two, and the match, two games to one.

Pranav lowered his raised hand. Then he stood and congratulated them before I did. The applause began while I was still looking at the two white men I had left on the board. They were the pieces I had considered awkward enough to beat. With the queen secured, they were exactly the points Asha could afford to give me.

10. The Report I Finally Wrote

Our club expected a report explaining the loss. I began with the first game, where we had been better, and the second, where they had answered. Then I wrote down all eight scores of the decider so that nobody could reduce it to a lucky last shot.

I described the queen cover and the two points my final black earned. I named Asha's choice before the stroke. Javed's seventh-board clearance belonged in the account too: without those five points, their eighth-board plan would not have been enough.

The secretary asked whether I wanted to mention that they had trained with us for years. I said the report should also mention why they had stopped.

That sentence took longer to write than the match scores. I recorded the shift and the repair appointment I had known about. I recorded my decision to remove them. I left out the word commitment because I had used it to avoid describing the work I expected other people to do.

At the hall, boards still had to be carried downstairs. I took one end. Pranav took the other. Asha and Javed passed us with their own equipment and the trophy. I offered a return match at our club, with the practice and setup times stated in advance.

Asha said they would discuss the date with their group. Javed held the door while we moved the board through it, then let it close behind us. Their team had its own room to return to.