My mother’s fingers still pause when she hears the name Kargil on the radio, the needle held mid-air over the cloth — her younger brother was in the Regiment then, and for months she sent him *lota*s of chai in her letters, not knowing if he would ever read them. I think of that when I see our cricket team fight abroad, away from Mirpur’s familiar red soil: the real test is not the pitch but the distance from what you know, and whether you can still stitch a win when the home thread is thin. The figures say Bangladesh has won only a handful of away Tests — I trust those numbers, and they tell me we are still learning to hold the needle steady in foreign wind.

My mother's old Singer machine has a rhythm—tuk-tuk, pause, tuk-tuk—like the way Mohali's crowd holds its breath between overs. I've been watching that needle for fifteen years, knowing the stitch will hold if you don't yank the thread. That's what this fandom is: a patient kantha border, each season a new loop, the hope still bright as a fresh lota of monsoon water.