Running between the wickets in Christchurch, Tilak Varma and Nitish Kumar Reddy were speaking Telugu.

At home, their fathers send each other a good-morning message on WhatsApp every day. Mutyala Reddy does it from Visakhapatnam, Namboori Nagaraju from Hyderabad .

Their sons gave them something to write about. Tilak and Nitish put on 69 runs from 30 deliveries to win the second T20I against New Zealand, 11,650 km from Hyderabad.

“The Hyderabadi boys are in play today, Nitish Reddy and I, and we are really happy that we finished the game,” Tilak said afterwards.

The Telugu was not lost on Mutyala. “Both of them speaking in Telugu out there somewhere in New Zealand made me extremely happy,” he told The Indian Express. “Many times in my experience, Telugu people who have gained stature, even those who know Telugu, deliberately speak in English, showing off their status, instead of speaking the language. For them, speaking in Telugu is like lowering their dignity.…