It’s strange how some people make such a significant impact on your life in a short space of time. Sidhanta Patnaik was one of those people for me. He was a friend, a mentor and an inspiration— someone I turned to for advice on all things writing and many things cricket. I first met Sidhanta in August 2015 when I joined Wisden India. In his own words, “We may not have gotten off on the best foot, but the more we talked I think it is fair to say that we realised we were more alike than we first thought.” His passion for domestic cricket and the women’s game was something I greatly admired. He pored over scorecards and dug through the archives to find a scrap of information that someone may have missed. That anyone could be so incredibly thorough and meticulous when it came to his work, I thought, was incredible. What was most impressive though, was his willingness to ask questions. He didn’t presume to know everything. When I first started out as a journalist, I was lucky