YY GAME: The Return Leg

1. YY GAME: One Game Behind

The notice on the wall showed the score from the away leg: Sajid and Paul, one game; Arun and Ketan, two. Four weeks later, the return match began with that deficit still attached to their names.

This local doubles challenge used a published two-leg format. Each leg was best of three games, and the pair winning more games across the two legs would take the contest. An equal aggregate would require the separate deciding game specified in advance.

Sajid and Paul could settle it without that extra game only by winning the return leg two-nil.

Paul read the notice twice. He was thirty-eight, worked rotating warehouse shifts and had spent a year pretending he no longer cared whether Sajid answered his calls.

Sajid was thirty-six. He had brought the same striker case they had used before their quarrel. The zip had been repaired with a short loop of cord.

Their former coordinator, Ganesh, stood beside the opposing pair. He had described Sajid and Paul as unreliable men whose friendship lasted only until a timetable became inconvenient.

For once, the insult had contained a fragment of truth. They had failed each other. What Ganesh had done was turn one failed journey into a permanent description of their ability.

Across the board, Arun placed his striker with the calm of a player who had already beaten them once. Ketan checked the surface. Neither intended to provide a sentimental reunion.

Paul sat opposite Sajid. They checked their places, the pieces and the match order. This time, nothing important would be left to an assumption.

2. The Journey They Never Finished

The year before, a missed overnight connection had destroyed their chance to reach a qualifying event on time. Sajid thought Paul had confirmed the revised departure point. Paul thought Sajid had read the message sent by the organiser.

Neither had checked with the other.

They arrived after the entry window closed. Ganesh had used the registered replacements, as the rules allowed. He could have left the matter there.

Instead, he told the waiting players that men who could not manage a bus should not pretend to manage a doubles board. He handed the pair's unused team shirts to the replacements while Sajid and Paul stood beside their bags.

Paul blamed Sajid on the journey home. Sajid said Paul cared more about being right than arriving. They argued until the conductor asked them to lower their voices.

After that, they stopped playing together.

Paul practised alone in a recreation room and missed the way Sajid used to challenge his careless queen attempts. Sajid entered singles events and found that winning a board did not remove the empty space across from him.

The worst meeting came outside the old club. Ganesh asked Sajid to carry a spare board inside, then told a visitor that former players were still useful for transport.

Paul was standing nearby. He watched Sajid put the board down and leave. For two days he told himself that intervening would have been awkward.

On the third, he called. He did not begin with the bus.

“I should have said something,” he said.

3. The Agreement Before the Practice

Their first return session was uncomfortable. Each expected the other to turn a missed stroke into evidence about the old journey.

Instead, they wrote down practical responsibilities. Paul would confirm travel details directly. Sajid would check the entry documents. Both would see the same information before leaving. Neither could say “I thought you knew” afterwards.

The game required a different agreement. They would review mistakes after play, not use gestures or comments to direct a partner during a competitive stroke.

They practised separately as well as together. Paul worked on choosing a queen attempt only when a credible cover remained. Sajid worked on direct strokes from awkward baseline positions, reducing force when the angle required a precise contact rather than a dramatic hit.

One exercise left two whites near different pockets, with the first stroke capable of disturbing the second if struck too hard. Sajid repeated it until he could pocket the first while leaving a usable position for the next.

Paul counted successful sequences, not isolated lucky pockets. If the first piece fell but the second became harder through unnecessary contact, the exercise had failed.

In return, Sajid refused to praise a queen pocket whose next stroke had no realistic cover. Paul found that irritating because the queen looked like progress. Then they compared the boards they actually won.

Their friendship did not return in one conversation. It returned through small promises kept on evenings when both were tired enough to break them.

4. The Away Loss

Arun and Ketan won the first leg two games to one. Sajid and Paul took the opening game, lost the second and could not recover the decider.

The opponents were good at changing the pace of a board. Arun used accurate direct pockets to clear early pieces. Ketan handled the congested positions without striking blindly through them. They made Sajid and Paul solve different problems on consecutive turns.

In the deciding game, Paul attempted a queen pocket before checking whether his remaining pieces offered a sensible cover. The queen went in, the cover failed and it returned to the centre under the rules. Later, Arun's side used the better opportunity.

Sajid also contributed to the loss. He struck a reachable white too firmly, disturbed another and spent his next turn trying to repair what the first stroke had created.

Afterwards Ganesh said the old partnership still knew how to distribute blame.

Paul opened his mouth. Sajid put the scoresheet on the table between them, outside the playing area.

“My force on the sixth board,” he said.

“My queen choice before that,” Paul answered.

They reviewed both. No one mistake was made to carry the whole defeat.

Four weeks remained before the return leg. The deficit was real. So was the useful information in the loss.

On the bus back, Paul checked the next departure aloud. Sajid looked at the same timetable. It was a small exchange that would not interest a spectator, and neither of them treated it as small.

5. Four Weeks of Ordinary Work

They did not spend the month imagining the celebration. They worked on the two errors the away leg had exposed.

Paul practised queen-and-cover sequences with different numbers of his own pieces already pocketed, always observing the eligibility and covering rules. He learned to recognise a situation in which leaving the queen alone was the stronger decision.

Sajid practised on boards with different speeds. He could not expect the return venue to feel exactly like the recreation room. Before each set of drills, he used allowed practice time to learn how far the striker travelled under a controlled stroke.

They also reviewed scoring near the end of a game. A queen already pocketed by their side would not add three points when their score had reached twenty-two or more. At that stage, the opposing pieces remaining when they cleared their own could matter more than a queen that looked important to the audience.

In one simulated finish, Paul celebrated a queen cover and announced enough points to win. Sajid pointed to their starting score of twenty-three. There would be no queen bonus.

They reset the board and played the actual task.

A week before the return leg, Paul missed a session because his shift changed. He told Sajid early, sent the available times and made up the work. Sajid did not turn it into proof that nothing had changed.

Trust became a schedule with corrections, not a demand that ordinary life never interfere.

6. The First Game Back

The return leg began with Sajid and Paul under pressure to win twice. They could not afford to treat the first game as a rehearsal.

Arun opened strongly. On an early board he cleared several blacks before a difficult next shot ended his turn. Sajid answered with two measured whites, avoiding the temptation to strike through a crowded group merely because the score was moving quickly.

Paul's important contribution came on a later board. He had a possible queen pocket, but the cover route was unreliable. He chose a direct white instead. When the position improved on a subsequent turn, he took the queen with a realistic cover and completed it.

Their side won that board while still eligible for queen credit. The three points counted because they had both covered the queen and won the board, and their score before it was below twenty-two.

The game remained close. Ketan made a difficult cut that kept the opponents alive. Arun punished one loose stroke. Sajid and Paul had to build the result through several turns, not one uninterrupted clearance.

They won the game twenty-five to twenty.

The aggregate across both legs was now two games each. One more win in this return leg would settle the contest three to two.

Ganesh told Arun and Ketan to take their time during the permitted interval. It was sensible advice. Paul drank water. Sajid checked the official game score, then put the case away without touching the spare striker inside it.

7. Twenty-Three Each

The second game developed into a more patient fight. The opponents no longer gave Sajid the same easy first contacts. Ketan kept his strokes controlled and left several pieces in positions where a careless clearance attempt would create new trouble.

Sajid missed a difficult white. Paul did not signal irritation across the board. On his next turn he chose the useful available stroke and kept the position manageable.

After six boards, Sajid and Paul led twenty-three to twenty-one. The eighth-board limit was approaching, but either side could still reach twenty-five first.

Arun and Ketan won the seventh board with two opposing whites left and no queen bonus. The score became twenty-three each.

The eighth board would decide this game unless it produced a tied outcome requiring the event's stated continuation procedure. Every player knew the task before the pieces were arranged.

Paul remembered the practice mistake in which he had counted a queen bonus from twenty-three. This time the score was not an abstract exercise. No three-point queen bonus would be available to either side at this score.

They still had to observe the queen rules correctly. They still had to clear their own pieces before the opponents. But the points needed to reach twenty-five would come from the opposing pieces left on the board.

Arun looked at Ketan, then back at the board. There was no collapse in their confidence. They had won the away decider and recovered two points here. Sajid and Paul would have to take the game from players who remained fully capable of winning it.

8. A Queen Without Three Points

The final board did not follow the shape of their drills. Pieces separated unevenly. One useful direct lane disappeared after a legal collision. Another opened when Ketan played a difficult black and moved the nearby group without pocketing an opposing piece.

Paul eventually pocketed the queen and covered it with a white on the following stroke. He did not look towards the scoreboard. At twenty-three, the queen would add no bonus even if their side won.

The cover mattered because the queen was now properly dealt with and their remaining whites could be cleared.

The play continued. By the time the decisive turn arrived, each side had two pieces left. Arun attempted a black from an awkward angle. It struck the pocket edge and stopped close enough to remain a serious threat on his next opportunity.

The turn moved to Sajid.

His first white had a direct route, but an excessive follow-through could disturb the other white and make its path worse. He had practised that family of problems without expecting this exact arrangement.

He positioned the striker, used only the force the contact needed and pocketed the first white. The second remained where he wanted it.

Paul stayed still opposite him. He did not point, nod towards a pocket or provide the reassurance Sajid had to supply for himself.

One white remained. Two blacks remained. The result was close enough to count and still far enough away to miss.

9. The Second Stroke

Sajid shifted the striker to a different legal position on the baseline. The last white could be pocketed directly if he contacted it accurately. Hitting harder would not widen the route.

He took one breath and struck.

The white travelled along the intended line and dropped. The striker continued without pocketing a black or entering a pocket itself.

Their whites were clear. Two blacks remained. The umpire awarded two points and no queen bonus.

Twenty-five to twenty-three. Sajid and Paul won the second game and the return leg two-nil.

Across the two legs, the games stood three to two in their favour. No extra deciding game was required.

Paul rose halfway from his chair, then sat back until the umpire completed the score check. Sajid laughed at the movement because he had almost done the same thing.

Only after the result was confirmed did they shake hands across the board and with both opponents. Arun said the first white had left the second exactly where it needed to be. Sajid thanked him. It was a precise compliment from somebody who understood how easily the turn could have ended differently.

Ketan asked to see the contact again after the presentation. Paul agreed before looking at Sajid, then corrected himself.

“Are we staying long enough?”

Sajid checked the travel plan they had both approved.

“We have forty minutes.”

The question was ordinary. So was the answer. That was part of what they had won back.

10. The Bus They Caught Together

Ganesh began describing the result as evidence of the old club's training. Paul asked him to include the away loss and the four weeks at the recreation room if he intended to describe the preparation.

Sajid did not wait for an answer. He and Ketan set up the final two-white position with permission and played it from both sides. Arun showed a slightly different defensive arrangement that would have made the clearance harder.

They tried that version too. It was harder.

Ketan asked how much force Sajid had taken off the first white. Sajid demonstrated. When the second attempt missed slightly, they examined the new position before resetting the pieces.

When their forty minutes were nearly over, Paul checked the time and said they needed to leave. Sajid packed the case. Neither accused the other of caring too much about a timetable.

They reached the bus stop early enough to sit. Paul held the board bag while Sajid bought tea. The trophy rested between their feet, wrapped to keep it from striking the metal seat.

For a while they discussed the seventh board, the one the opponents had won. Then Paul said he had been wrong to turn the missed journey into a test of which friend cared more.

Sajid said he had done the same.

The bus arrived. They checked its destination before boarding.

Inside, Paul put the bag where both could see it and asked whether they would practise on Tuesday.

Sajid opened the shared calendar. He had an early shift, Paul a late one. They found a different evening.

Paul saved the appointment. Sajid fastened the repaired striker case and put it between them. When his phone lit up with the shared reminder, both men reached to acknowledge it.