Jadeja's ideas and their execution had always been a whole generation ahead of his team's. The only person who could keep up with him, and was overall as daring and ingenious as him was Virat.

When Virat was sleeping in the afternoon, he abruptly woke up hearing a loud banging on the door.

Cursing to himself, he dragged himself out of bed to open the door.

Jaddu was standing there with a sack, grinning broadly.

"Jaddu, I swear if you've come to annoy me--" began Virat.

"Want to be partners, captain?" asked Jaddu, his grin not faltering a bit.

Virat's momentary temper vanished at once. He accepted Jaddu's outstretched hand and pulled him inside the room.

"What have you got in that sack?" he asked.

Jaddu took out a plastic from the sack and held it up.

"Ew, Jaddu, where did you get this from?" asked Virat, his face scrunched up in disgust.

"Revolting, isn't it?" said Jaddu wickedly. "Suppose you woke up one morning--and saw a run-over crow in front of your eyes?"

Virat stared at Jaddu in awe.

"Jad...dare we?" he breathed.

"For Rohit," said Jaddu. "And also because we've got to beat their Rudolph feat, which was actually very brilliant."

"Deal."

They fist bumped and then sat down to plan it to the very last detail.

The first requirement was the master key to Sofia Hayat's room, of course, so they went to get it from Hardik, who had kept it safely, sure that they'd need it again.

Then as their plan progressed, they had to go out to the local market to buy blood from a chicken shop and a cleansing spirit.

As they were chalking out the exact timing needed to carry out the steps, the door flew open and Rohit looked in.

"Care to go out for tea, you two? Rahul has found a nice place."

"Can't you see we're busy?" demanded Virat.

"All right, sorry," said Rohit sportingly, and he disappeared again.

Barely a minute later, the door opened again.

"The media want an interview, Virat bhai," said Kuldeep.

Virat groaned. "I won't go."

"But--" began Kuldeep timidly.

"We're busy, Kuliya. Tell Rohit to manage it!"

"Right!" Kuldeep went away hastily, seeing that Virat bhai looked in a rather cranky mood.

"No peace in this place," Virat muttered to Jaddu, who, not being as impatient as Kohli, hadn't minded the interruptions, and was rather enjoying Virat's reaction.

They resumed their planning, and the door banged open again.

"Do we have practice tomorrow, captain?" asked Hardik in his usual loud manner.

"I don't know!" snapped Virat.

Jaddu motioned at Hardik to go away, and the latter did so with a shrug.

When the door started to open for a fourth time in fifteen minutes, Virat shouted, "Don't come in!"

The person outside came in anyway, and Virat started to yell, "Can't you guys give us a moment of--"

Then he saw that it was Bhuvi, looking rather confused. Virat stopped yelling at once, because right since 2013, the one person he had always found impossible to yell at was Bhuvi.

"Sorry, Bhuvi, didn't mean that," said Virat, and Jaddu smiled. "Do you want something?"

"Yes," said Bhuvi. "Sofia went out a few minutes ago and Jassi and I caught two rats from the garden..."

"Wow," said Jadeja, starting to laugh as the endless possibilities began to present themselves in his imaginative mind.

Bhuvi grinned. "I know, right? Hardik said you've got the master key, Virat."

"Sure, take it," said Virat, tossing it to Bhuvi, and he was grinning too, his temper forgotten. "What do you and Jassi mean to do?"

Bhuvi winked and left.

_____________

That evening, Sofia Hayat came to dinner wearing a tattered dress, which confirmed the success of Bhuvi and Bumrah's prank.

After dinner, the team noticed her storming towards the hotel owner's chamber with purpose.

Hardik, their best spy, was sent to tail her, but eventually, they decided that they needed to see it firsthand, too, and the entire team crowded outside the room in pin drop silence, eavesdropping.

"How can you let rats stay in the cupboard of a hotel room?" Sofia was shrieking.

"I--I can't believe our staff would be so careless--this is the first time I've heard--" The poor man sounded completely bewildered.

"They shredded every single dress of mine into rags. Every. Single. Dress!" emphasised Sofia in distress.

By this time, the Indian team outside were finding it extremely difficult to muffle their laughter.

"Yes, I understand--"

"I don't have anything proper to wear anymore!" cried Sofia, getting hysterical. "How will I--"

At that point, Kuldeep exploded.

"Kuldeep!" hissed a dozen voices in exasperation, but it was too late; the people inside had already heard, and they were evidently coming out to investigate, judging by the scraping of chairs.

Not wasting a single moment, using every bit of their cricket-trained instincts, the team fled into the garden so fast that they had completely vanished before the hotel owner had even opened the door.

In the safety of the garden, they laughed and celebrated and hugged Bhuvi and Jassi (and also scolded Kuldeep a little) to their heart's content. No one observing them from afar would ever believe that they were the same people who represented the country in its biggest sport and that they gave interviews and conducted themselves with such dignity in public that they were considered the epitome of 'gentlemen'.

The Indian team, just then, were anything but gentlemen.