MMY | The Hand He Mocked Won the Fifth Board

1. MMY: One Board Down

Dinesh missed the last white by less than the width of a fingernail. The carromman touched the pocket edge, rolled away and stopped in open space. Shrikant finished his remaining black on the next turn.

One board to Shrikant in their best-of-five local challenge. Around the room, people began speaking in the gentle voices Dinesh disliked more than open mockery.

At sixty-one, he had played this rival for nearly half his life. He knew the satisfaction beneath Shrikant's concern when the man asked whether they should shorten the match.

“The conditions say five boards at most,” Dinesh answered. “We have played one.”

His right hand shook slightly as he returned the striker to its case for the scheduled interval. He did not hide it beneath the table. His daughter, thirty-two-year-old Pooja, watched from behind the spectator line and kept her own hands folded.

Shrikant turned towards the room. “I offered.”

Dinesh looked at the board while the pieces were reset. The miss had come from using the old force on a shot that now needed a different approach. He had recognised it immediately. Recognition had not saved the board.

On the wall, the match notice carried two names in equal lettering. He had insisted on that when Shrikant proposed advertising the afternoon as a farewell demonstration.

2. MMY story: The Hand He Copied

Three months earlier, Dinesh had attended a club evening after a long absence. His hand steadiness had become less predictable, and he was still learning which kinds of play remained comfortable. He had sought professional advice about his circumstances and made his plans around the limits discussed there.

He expected the first games back to be difficult. He did not expect Shrikant to hold up a shaking hand for the room and imitate the way his striker had slipped.

“New style,” Shrikant said. “Nobody can predict it, including the player.”

People laughed. Someone laughed and then looked ashamed. Dinesh gathered his striker before the next board. At home, Pooja found him placing old medals inside a cardboard box that had once held spare bookbinding cloth.

He had spent his working life repairing books. The workshop was another person's business now. Carrom had been the place where nobody called him retired until that evening.

For two weeks he refused invitations. Then Shrikant sent the farewell demonstration proposal, with his own photograph larger than Dinesh's. Dinesh read it twice and replied with terms for a genuine match: equal names, published rules, a referee and a best-of-five-board result.

Shrikant accepted. He told the club that accommodating an old rival cost him nothing.

Dinesh took one medal out of the cardboard box and used its ribbon to close a new practice notebook.

3. The Practice That Failed

His first attempt at preparation was to recover the player he remembered. He practised long sessions, demanded the old force from his hand and became less accurate as the evening went on. The notebook filled with misses he could barely distinguish from one another.

He tried changing legal strikers, changing his seat and copying a younger player's release. Each new idea briefly felt like an answer. Then the same difficult shot exposed the weakness again.

Pooja did not tell him that determination could solve everything. She asked why he kept recording only successful pockets. When they counted the whole session, the pattern was obvious: his cleaner attempts came earlier, with a comfortable setup and a controlled stroke. The late attempts mostly repeated frustration.

Dinesh changed the practice structure in line with his own advice and needs. Shorter, deliberate sets. Time to review between them. Familiar legal positioning. No attempt counted as useful unless he could describe the contact, pace and striker path.

He also stopped making every exercise a test of the hardest shot he had once played. Straight pockets, manageable cuts and practical position choices returned to the notebook.

Some days were poor from the beginning. On those days he ended earlier and reviewed diagrams instead. The calendar still moved towards the match. Shrikant's accepted challenge sat beside it, with two equal names and no promise about how Dinesh's hand would feel that afternoon.

4. A Smaller Range, Used Well

The most painful change concerned power. Dinesh had once enjoyed a dramatic double rebound that drew applause even in practice. Now its success depended on a narrow combination of speed and release that he could not reproduce reliably.

He spent an entire session trying to force it back. Afterwards, the notebook showed two successes surrounded by failures that would have offered an opponent easy finishes.

At the next session he placed the same coin in the same position and searched for alternatives. Moving the striker within the permitted baseline area changed the angle. Sometimes a direct cut was possible. Sometimes the best choice was a controlled positional shot that left a more manageable chance later.

He practised accepting the end of a turn without pocketing anything when the alternative was a reckless attempt. He practised queen decisions only when a realistic cover route existed. He practised the final own coin with the queen already lawfully secured, so excitement would not make him forget the board's actual condition.

Pooja arranged a few sessions with adult club players who would play normally against him. They did not make the shots easier. Dinesh lost often. He also began winning boards through decisions that had once felt too modest to be called his style.

One evening he crossed out the words recover old stroke. Underneath he wrote choose today's shot.

5. The Second Board

Back in the challenge hall, Dinesh began the second board by pocketing a straightforward white and then stopping short of an ambitious combination. His next attempt improved a crowded position but did not pocket another coin. The turn passed to Shrikant.

Shrikant attacked and made two good pockets. He remained a serious opponent, not merely the man who had mocked a hand. Dinesh watched the board change and waited for the opportunities his own range could use.

A white moved into a clean lane after Shrikant's miss. Dinesh pocketed it with a compact stroke. The queen was available, but he checked the cover before touching the striker again. A nearby white offered a dependable next shot if the queen went in.

He took the queen and covered it on the continuing turn. The final white required a cut from the legal baseline rather than the old double rebound. Dinesh shifted his striker position, settled and struck.

The coin dropped. The board was his.

One each.

Shrikant asked the referee to confirm the cover, though the sequence had been plain. The referee did so. Dinesh put the striker down and took the permitted interval without studying the spectators' faces.

Pooja saw his hand tremble slightly when he reached for water. She also saw that he had written nothing in the notebook, which remained closed outside the playing area. He was saving his attention for the next board.

6. The Third Board Hurts

The third board exposed the part of the match Dinesh could not control. His first release felt less settled. A simple white stopped short. On the next turn he adjusted too much and sent another coin beyond the intended pocket line.

Shrikant seized the opening. He pocketed the queen and covered it correctly, then kept his own colour moving towards accessible lanes. Dinesh made two useful pockets but could not close the gap. Shrikant finished the board with three whites still remaining.

Two boards to one. One more for Shrikant would end the challenge.

During the scheduled interval, Dinesh sat in the chair provided beside the playing area. He could hear the room discussing whether he had already done enough by taking one board. The suggestion landed like a door closing politely in his face.

Pooja came only as far as spectators were allowed. She did not offer tactical advice. Dinesh met her eyes and nodded once.

When play resumed, Shrikant asked whether he wanted the farewell photograph before the final board. Dinesh checked the freshly arranged pieces.

“The fourth board,” he said.

Shrikant smiled as if the distinction were childish. He took his opening turn confidently. Dinesh waited, watching where the coins stopped. He was no longer trying to reproduce how his hand had felt twenty years ago or even an hour earlier.

7. The Board He Refuses to Rush

Dinesh's fourth-board chances came slowly. He pocketed one white, then spent a turn opening a lane without forcing a collision through a crowded group. Shrikant responded with an attacking shot that succeeded and a second that did not.

The queen remained central while both players reduced their own colours. Dinesh had an opportunity to take it, but the available cover required the unreliable power shot he had removed from his preferred choices. He selected a white instead.

Shrikant reached the queen first. His cover attempt missed, and under the referee's procedure the queen returned to the centre. Dinesh watched the replacement and re-evaluated the whole board. One of his whites now lay in a manageable line from his side.

He pocketed the queen, covered it with that white and still had another own coin to finish. The remaining shot was not automatic. He had to avoid sending the striker towards a pocket after contact.

He checked the return path and used less force than the spectators expected. The white travelled slowly enough for someone to draw in breath halfway through its journey. It reached the pocket and fell.

Two boards each.

Shrikant looked towards the match notice. The farewell demonstration he had proposed had become a deciding board with a referee waiting for his signature after the result. Dinesh rested his hand in his lap during the interval and kept his eyes on the board being reset.

8. The Queen Belongs to Shrikant

In the fifth board, Shrikant played his best opening of the afternoon. He pocketed two blacks, took the queen when a clear route emerged and covered it properly. The red was secured for his side; Dinesh could not build his plan around claiming it later.

He still had to finish his own whites before Shrikant finished the blacks. The board remained open, and there were chances for both players. Shrikant's advantage was practical: his remaining coins looked easier to reach.

Dinesh pocketed a white on a simple line and tried to improve the next position. The second attempt did not fall, but it left the coin closer to a direct route. Shrikant had a chance to punish him immediately. He made one black and then missed a thin cut on another.

The miss changed the board's pace. Dinesh took another white and again resisted the urge to force everything in one visit. Three whites became two. Shrikant still had two blacks.

One of Dinesh's remaining coins invited the old double rebound. Another approach, from a different legal striker placement, offered a longer but cleaner direct line. He checked both while waiting for his turn.

Shrikant missed the next black narrowly. The coin struck the pocket edge and rolled across the mouth without falling. Dinesh recognised the same sound that had cost him the opening board. This time he was the player being offered another chance.

9. Two Whites

Dinesh placed the striker for the easier of his two remaining whites. The legal line was clear. He did not hurry because the room had become quiet. A compact strike sent the coin into the pocket and left the striker safely on the board.

One white remained. Shrikant leaned forward, ready for any miss to return the turn. The queen had already been covered by the opposing side, so Dinesh needed only to finish his own last coin lawfully to win this board.

He shifted to the alternative baseline position he had examined. From there, the direct shot asked for measured contact rather than the spectacular rebound he no longer trusted. His hand shook slightly before he settled it. He waited within the permitted shot time until his setup felt usable.

The striker moved. The white travelled along the chosen line, brushed the pocket's inner edge and disappeared. The striker remained in play.

The referee confirmed the board. Dinesh had won the challenge by three boards to two.

Shrikant looked at the pocket, then at the hand he had copied for a laugh. Dinesh was opening and closing that hand gently beside his chair, listening while the score was read aloud.

There was no gentle applause now. People stood. Pooja waited until he stepped away from the playing area before taking the striker case from him. It was the only thing he asked her to carry.

10. The Next Date Is His

Shrikant signed the five-board result. The organiser placed the trophy between them for a photograph, then asked whether they should use the farewell wording from the first draft of the notice.

“No,” Dinesh said. “Use the result.”

The finished caption listed the sequence: loss, win, loss, win, win. Shrikant's name appeared beside the losing total. The large photograph he had supplied for a demonstration was replaced by the actual match image, with both men standing at equal distance from the board.

Invitations arrived before Dinesh left the hall. A weekly series, a travel event, another challenge. He chose one local playing afternoon the following month and asked for its conditions in writing. The rest could wait.

The organiser still had the farewell notice in a folder. Dinesh asked to see it before leaving. Under his name were the words final appearance.

He returned it unsigned. Beside it he placed the agreed date of the new local challenge. Shrikant watched the organiser remove the old notice from the display and replace it with the five-board result.

Pooja took the trophy. Dinesh took his own striker case. At the door he checked the replacement once: loss, win, loss, win, win. Then he walked out while the man who had planned his farewell was still reading it.