---
Breakfast was parathas with white butter and a steel tumbler of warm milk.
Shivam sat at the small dining table — a four-seater that took up most of the kitchen space — and stared at the food in front of him with the expression of a man who had just been handed a gift he wasn't sure he deserved.
His mother moved around the kitchen behind him, the sounds of clanging vessels and the hiss of the gas stove forming the exact soundtrack of every morning he had spent in this flat between the ages of five and eighteen. It was so familiar it hurt.
He picked up the paratha. He took a bite.
The taste hit him like a physical blow.
He hadn't eaten his mother's cooking in years. Not this cooking — not this exact, specific, irreplaceable taste that no dhaba or restaurant or carefully followed recipe had ever come close to replicating. The butter was slightly salty. The paratha had a thin, crisp edge and a soft, yielding centre. It tasted like every morning before a school cricket match. It tasted like the person he had been before disappointment had quietly become his default setting.
He set it down and stared at the table.
*Get it together,* he told himself. *You're a 30-year-old man. In a 10-year-old's body. Crying over a paratha would be embarrassing regardless of the circumstances.*
He picked it up again and ate with quiet, determined focus.
"You're eating properly today," his mother noted approvingly from behind him. "Usually you bolt it down in three bites and run."
"I'm not in a hurry," he said. His child's voice still startled him slightly every time he heard it.
She came around and sat across from him, nursing her own cup of chai, studying him with the patient, perceptive attention that mothers deployed and sons never fully appreciated until it was too late.
"Something is different about you today," she said. It wasn't a question.
He looked up at her. "Different how?"
"Your eyes." She tilted her head slightly. "You look... older."
He held her gaze steadily. "I just had a very vivid dream, Aai. It made me think."
She considered this for a moment, then seemed to accept it with the pragmatic grace of a woman who had long since made peace with the fact that her son was occasionally strange in ways she couldn't fully catalogue. She reached across and straightened his collar.
"Don't be late for school," she said.
---
School was simultaneously the most bizarre and the most manageable part of the morning.
Bizarre, because Shivam Dube — who had last sat in a classroom at the age of seventeen, who had spent the last twenty years of his life thinking about cricket to the exclusion of almost everything else — was now sitting in a Standard Five classroom at D.G. Ruparel Colony Municipal School, Dadar, listening to a teacher explain long division.
Manageable, because long division presented no intellectual challenge whatsoever to a 30-year-old mind, leaving said mind completely free to think about cricket.
He sat in the third row — his usual seat, he remembered — and kept a politely attentive expression on his face while his brain worked at full capacity on a completely different problem.
*The plan.*
He needed a plan. Not just a vague, inspirational second-chance-at-life plan, but a specific, concrete, year-by-year roadmap from a 10-year-old in Dadar to the Indian national cricket team.
He opened his exercise book and, under the cover of pretending to take notes on long division, he began to write.
---
**SHIVAM DUBE — PERSONAL ROADMAP**
*(Private. Destroy if found.)*
**Current Status:**
Age: 10. Year: 2001. Location: Dadar, Mumbai.
Physical condition: Excellent (10-year-old body, no injuries).
Cricket skill: Foundational (child level).
Cricket knowledge: Advanced (30-year-old retained memory).
**Immediate Goals (Age 10–12):**
- Join MCA (Mumbai Cricket Association) age-group programme.
- Find a proper coach. Not a colony coach — a real one.
- Begin serious fitness foundation NOW. Core, flexibility, stamina.
- Develop batting technique from scratch, correctly.
- Left-hand batting stance — keep it natural, don't overcorrect.
- Begin bowling regularly. Pace is a gift — maintain it.
**Medium Goals (Age 13–16):**
- Under-14 and Under-16 Mumbai selection.
- Make myself impossible to ignore at every trial.
- DO NOT get injured. Manage workload ruthlessly.
- Identify and learn from: Dravid's footwork, Sehwag's eye, Tendulkar's balance.
**Long-term Goals (Age 17–20):**
- Under-19 India squad.
- Ranji Trophy debut for Mumbai.
- IPL auction (begins 2008 — be ready).
**The Knee:**
The injury happens around age 22–23, Ranji Trophy.
Cause: mistimed pull shot, awkward landing, torn ACL.
Prevention: strengthen knee ligaments NOW and continuously.
Single-leg squats. Resistance bands. Never skip leg day. Ever.
---
He looked at what he had written.
It was, he was aware, the most ambitious cricket plan ever written in a Standard Five long division notebook in the history of the Mumbai Municipal School system.
He underlined *DO NOT get injured* twice.
---
His best friend, Rohan Patil, slid into the seat next to him at lunch break and stole a piece of his paratha with the casual confidence of someone who had been doing this for five years.
"You were weird this morning," Rohan said, chewing.
"Good morning to you too."
"In assembly. You were standing there with this face." Rohan attempted to recreate the expression — a kind of still, faraway intensity. The result looked more like a constipated owl.
"I was thinking," Shivam said.
"About what?"
"Cricket."
Rohan relaxed immediately. This, clearly, was a completely normal and acceptable answer. "Oh. Okay. Gully match after school?"
Shivam thought about it. In his previous life he had played thousands of hours of gully cricket in this very compound — chaotic, joyful, technically sloppy cricket that had given him a love for the game but also some deeply ingrained bad habits that had taken years to undo.
This time, he would still play. But he would play with intention. Every shot, every ball — he would be thinking. Building something, not just swinging.
"Yes," he said. "But I want to bowl first today."
Rohan stared at him. "You never want to bowl. You always fight Vijay for batting first."
"I want to bowl today," Shivam repeated.
Rohan shrugged with the philosophical acceptance of a 10-year-old for whom the internal logic of other 10-year-olds was not worth interrogating too deeply. "Okay, fine. More batting for me."
---
The gully match that afternoon was held in the narrow lane behind the colony, as it had been every afternoon since Shivam could remember, conducted with a tennis ball, a taped bat that had lost most of its rubber grip, and a set of rules that had evolved organically over years into something that bore only approximate resemblance to actual cricket.
Fourteen boys. Two rough concrete walls serving as boundaries. A drain cover as the pitch. Mango tree as umpire.
Shivam stood at the top of his mark — a crack in the tarmac about eight paces back — and for the first time, actually looked at the delivery stride he was about to use.
In his previous life he had been a bits-and-pieces medium pacer at best. Useful for breaking partnerships in domestic T20s, nothing more. But his 30-year-old memory held something valuable: he had, at the age of 14, fallen into a bowling habit that had subtly and permanently reduced the efficiency of his action. A front-arm that collapsed too early. Hip rotation that didn't fully fire through. He had never had a coach who spotted it and corrected it in time, and by the time anyone mentioned it, the habit was too ingrained to undo without completely breaking down his action from scratch.
He wasn't 14 yet. He had time.
He ran in now with slow, deliberate steps, feeling the mechanics — shoulder rotation, hip drive, front arm pulling down, wrist position at release. He was 10 years old and his body was small and his pace was nothing, just a loopy, gentle delivery that bounced twice before reaching the drain-cover pitch.
Vijay, the colony's self-appointed best batsman, knocked it dismissively through mid-on for two.
But Shivam wasn't thinking about the result. He was thinking about whether the hip had fired correctly on that delivery.
He thought it had. Marginally.
He ran in again.
---
He batted at number four. In gully cricket terms this was a significant demotion — he usually fought to open — but he stood at the side and *watched* while the others batted before him, which he had never done with any real attention before.
He watched foot movement. He watched head position. He watched how the boys who got out kept getting out in the same ways — reaching for the wide one, shuffling across too far to the straight ball, playing across the line to anything full.
He had watched elite cricket with a coach's eye for years. It felt very strange to apply that same analytical gaze to a gully match being played with a taped bat on a Dadar back lane. But the principles were the same. The geometry of bat and ball did not change based on the quality of the players.
When he finally walked in to bat, there were four overs left and his team needed 18 runs.
He picked up the battered taped bat. He took guard — off stump, even though nobody kept an official guard in gully cricket, which earned him some puzzled looks. He looked around the field. He breathed.
He played the first ball straight back down the ground. One run. Clean contact, dead-center of the taped bat.
The second ball was short and wide outside off. He rocked back and cut it hard along the ground to the wall. Four.
Rohan, fielding at point, said: "Arre, what happened to you today?"
The third ball he missed completely, the bounce being unpredictable off the drain cover. He reset. No frustration. Just reset.
*Next ball.*
The fourth was full and straight. He drove it back firmly — not the wild slog he would have played in his previous 10-year-old life, but a proper, balanced front-foot drive. The ball hit the far wall on the full.
"Six!" someone shouted.
He finished the game with 14 runs off 9 balls — not the flashiest innings, but controlled, intentional, built from specific decisions rather than instinct and hope.
His team won by 3 runs.
Rohan clapped him on the shoulder as they walked back through the colony gate. "You played different today."
"I've been thinking about technique," Shivam said.
Rohan stared at him for a long moment. "You're very weird today."
"You said that already."
"It's still true."
---
That evening, after dinner, after his homework was done — quickly, efficiently, with the slightly unsettling competence of a 30-year-old intelligence in a Standard Five curriculum — Shivam sat on his cot in the dark and thought.
The system panel appeared again, softly, without the chime this time. As if it had simply been waiting for him to be still enough to read it.
```
════════════════════════════════════
★ TEMPLATE SYSTEM ★
════════════════════════════════════
HOST : SHIVAM DUBE
STATUS : Active | Age 10 | Day 2
DAILY ACTIVITY LOG
════════════════════════════════════
Bowling Practice
Deliveries bowled : 22 (Gully)
Mechanical focus : Hip rotation,
Front-arm discipline
Progress : +0.3% Action Efficiency
[Minimal — Consistent
effort required]
Batting Practice
Balls faced : 9 (Gully)
Runs scored : 14
Dismissals : 0
Key shots executed :
Cut shot ✓
Front-foot drive ✓
Straight drive ✓
Progress : +0.2% Timing Index
[Minimal — Consistent
effort required]
Match Awareness [Active]
Observations logged : Foot movement patterns,
Common dismissal triggers,
Field placement awareness
Status : Functioning
════════════════════════════════════
SYSTEM NOTE
════════════════════════════════════
"Progress at this stage will feel
invisible, Host.
It is not.
The foundation determines the
height of everything built on it.
Report to a proper net session
within 7 days."
════════════════════════════════════
CAREER RECORD (Updated)
════════════════════════════════════
Competitive matches : 0
Gully/Informal : 1
Runs (informal) : 14
Wkts (informal) : 0
Official career stats remain
at zero until competitive
matches begin.
════════════════════════════════════
```
Shivam read the panel twice. Then he lay back on his cot, staring at the ceiling fan turning slowly in the warm dark.
*Report to a proper net session within 7 days.*
He thought of his father — Ramesh Dube, who worked at the textile office in Parel, who had taken him to his first cricket match at the Wankhede, who had bought that full-size bat even though the junior one was cheaper, because his son had stood in the shop with such complete, utter conviction on his round little face that it had been impossible to say no. His father who had quietly, steadily, without drama or complaint, supported every cricket ambition until the injury had come and taken the wind out of everything.
He needed to talk to his father.
Not as a 10-year-old asking to play cricket. As a person with a plan asking for the tools to execute it.
He would have to be careful about how he did that. He couldn't explain why. He could only be convincing enough that the *why* didn't matter.
He closed his eyes.
He had been given the map. Now he had to walk the road.
He would start tomorrow.
---
**— End of Chapter 2 —**
---
```
★ CAREER STATS — END OF CHAPTER 2 ★
OFFICIAL (Competitive matches only)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Format Mat Inns Runs HS Avg SR 100s 50s Wkts
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
First Class 0 0 0 — — — 0 0 0
List A 0 0 0 — — — 0 0 0
T20 0 0 0 — — — 0 0 0
INFORMAL LOG (Gully/Colony — tracked separately)
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Games : 1 | Runs : 14 | Dismissals : 0 | Wkts : 0
────────────────────────────────────────────────────