The government-funded Cricket Bunglow was one of two options for eight-year-old Ravindra. If not "accepted" there, he was to be sent to the army school, which meant boarding there and staying away from his mother.
Getting accepted at Cricket Bunglow wasn't easy. Chauhan doesn't want to talk about the conversation he had with the parents when they left Jadeja with him, but he assured them Ravindra could stay if he was sincere about the game. Naina says the place is still known for its discipline. Nobody does "time-pass" there. Chauhan makes parents sign a contract making clear that Cricket Bunglow hasn't taken a penny for its services, that the parents can't make cricketing decisions for their sons while they are there, and that he can beat the boys all he wants.
Hair? Check. Glasses? Check © AFP
A couple of days after interviewing the Jadejas, Chauhan agreed to accept Ravindra, who used to bowl seam-up back then. He didn't have the height for seam, so Chauhan turned him to spin. "He shot in height later," Naina says. "Also, he used to be so fair. Look what he has done playing for so long in the sun."
Cricket Bunglow became Jadeja's field of dreams.
Jamnagar can nudge 50 degrees in the summer. It didn't matter. There was no grass. It didn't matter. Fielding was given importance at the Bunglow. "That's the first thing that stands out about a cricketer," Chauhan believes. The kids used to dive on rock-hard, barren fields in the heat and go back home with bloodied arms, elbows and knees.
Jadeja was a particularly naughty kid. After a day's cricket he would stay back or go out wandering with his friends, who nicknamed him "Revadi". Naina would drop him off on a bicycle ("a bicycle was big for those times," she says), bring him his tiffin in the afternoon, and watch him play after lunch from across a netting, probably sitting somewhere near the Vinoo Mankad statue outside the Bunglow. "It was such a relief to watch him happy and watch him play," she says.
"Look, we have a rock star amidst us," the man said. Jadeja had no idea the man was Shane Warne
Naina could have made a journalist herself. Without letting Ravindra know, she would find out everything about him from his friends. "I would do my CID," she says proudly. Her "sources" used to tell her how he used to run along the top of the main boundary wall at the Bunglow. How he would climb any tree anywhere. The first time the ladies discovered Ravindra walking and talking in his sleep, they feared some spirit from one of the trees had possessed him.
Lata was worried when little Ravindra first travelled with Chauhan's team. Chauhan was told of the boy's sleep disorders. Chauhan asked them not to worry. And this is what Naina's "sources" told her: when Ravindra sleepwalked, Chauhan first asked him where he was going, and when he didn't get a reply, he slapped him hard. "From that day on, he has never sleepwalked."
Chauhan is proud of his ways. He says Ravindra was the one he beat the most. "I used to hit students," Chauhan says. "You wander outside, I will hit. You so much as look outside, I will hit. I want Cricket Bunglow, home and studies. That's it."
