Pink shoes. Pink glares. The Mo­hawk. Sunil Nar­ine stands out from the rest of the Kolkata Knight Rid­ers squad even from a dis­tance. Yet not many, in­clud­ing the me­dia, are pay­ing at­ten­tion to the West In­dies off­spin­ner.

It is three in the af­ter­noon. Peak sum­mer heat soar­ing at about 38 de­grees centi­grade along with Kolkata's ex­treme hu­mid­i­ty lev­els. It is un­bear­able.

A fan, sit­ting be­hind the nets where Nar­ine is bowl­ing, col­laps­es and has an epilep­tic fit, forc­ing Knight Rid­ers phys­io­ther­a­pist An­drew Lei­pus to rush to the spot. Amid all this chaos, Nar­ine re­mains un­flus­tered.

It is on­ly his sec­ond day at train­ing hav­ing en­dured a dif­fi­cult last week.

Forced by the BC­CI dik­tat, he had to trav­el to the ICC-ac­cred­it­ed cen­tre in Chen­nai to get his ac­tion retest­ed de­spite hav­ing got a clear­ance from the test­ing cen­tre at Uni­ver­si­ty of Lough­bor­ough in March.

Al­though Nar­ine got an all-clear from BC­CI's sub-com­mit­tee deal­ing with sus­pect ac­tions, the Knight Rid­ers man­age­ment fear that men­tal­ly it might have had an im­pact on him on the eve of the tour­na­ment.

That pres­sure will not cease till some­time at least con­sid­er­ing the BC­CI has in­struct­ed the um­pires to take tough stance against bowlers with sus­pect ac­tions. But in the nets, with no um­pires ob­serv­ing him, Nar­ine is his usu­al lan­guid self. He does not rush in to bowl. It does not both­er him that his first few balls are eas­i­ly dealt by Ryan ten Doeschate.

Glares on, he takes the short run-up to de­liv­er to ten Doeschate.

Watch­ing from be­hind the nets, to the un­trained eye, it is dif­fi­cult to pick the sub­tle changes Nar­ine has car­ried out as part of the re­mod­el­ling of his ac­tion.

Ten min­utes in­to his bowl­ing, Nar­ine flips the glares up­side down and sticks them at the back of his head. He is now ready. There is a new bats­man. Yusuf Pathan.

The sec­ond ball he faces, Nar­ine de­liv­ers the car­om ball. The tra­jec­to­ry is a lit­tle flat­ter. But Yusuf has not read Nar­ine's hand as he de­fends un­con­vinc­ing­ly.

The next ball is flight­ed and it dips. Yusuf has to lunge for­ward to tap it safe­ly.

Few balls lat­er Nar­ine bowls a rank half track­er and Yusuf glee­fu­ly steps back and pulls pow­er­ful­ly.

Yusuf prob­a­bly imag­ines it to be a six but Nar­ine sig­nals a four.

Yusuf does not re­spond. Nar­ine does the sig­nal once more, this time with a mod­est smile. Yusuf ac­knowl­edges.

A few more balls, Nar­ine wraps up his train­ing af­ter 15 min­utes and walks away in­to the dress­ing room on­ly to emerge cou­ple of hours lat­er to en­ter the team bus.

A few fans shout "Nar­ine, Nar­ine" and he ac­knowl­edges them by rais­ing his right hand. The loud­est cheers are re­served for "Yusuf bhai," "Robin," "Gamb­hir," "Surya."

Even dur­ing the nets it is for­mer Pak­istan fast-bowl­ing ace Wasim Akram, the Knights Rid­ers bowl­ing con­sul­tant, who is the cyno­sure of the 50-strong fans. "Wasim bhai, ek baar dal do. Dil shant ho jayega (please bowl one ball. It would re­lieve the heart) shouts a young se­cu­ri­ty guard.

An­oth­er group of teenagers walk in ex­cit­ed­ly and sud­den­ly spot Bangladesh all­rounder Shak­ib Al Hasan. They de­cide to take a self­ie with him in the back­ground. Not one is in­ter­est­ed in Nar­ine.

In­ter­est­ing­ly as you walk in­to and in­side the Eden Gar­dens, Nar­ine re­mains in­con­spic­u­ous. Gamb­hir, Uthap­pa, Yusuf–all of them are star­ing down from huge bill­boards.

An­dre Rus­sell and Morne Morkel are part of the screens that sep­a­rate the Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion of Ben­gal lob­by and the home dress­ing rooms.

There is a side pro­file of Nar­ine that looks at you from the screen cov­er­ing the vis­i­tor's dress­ing room, but you are bound to miss it as it is part­ly hid­den by a pil­lar.

Knight Rid­ers' most valu­able play­er re­mains in­vis­i­ble. Per­haps it suits him.

Qui­et in cel­e­bra­tion. Qui­et in agony.