Chapter 10: Chapter 10:
The chain on my Atlas bicycle gave a sharp, greasy rattle every time I stood up on the pedals. It was 4:40 AM. The air cutting across my face was freezing, but my legs moved smoothly, without that old, deep-seated stiffness.
It still felt fake sometimes.
Six months ago, I was a gray-haired, forty-three-year-old shopkeeper wincing every time my left knee gave off a grinding click behind the glass counter. My old body was a wreck. Now, my lungs pulled in air without a single wheeze, and my chest didn’t feel like an iron vice was clamping down on it.
But I hadn’t just sat around waiting for the System templates to do the work. Decades of future muscle memory were useless if the actual physical body was running on sluggish fuel.
In 1991, nobody in Indian cricket knew anything about sports nutrition. The senior Ranji boys routinely showed up to matches stuffed with heavy aloo parathas, mounds of white rice, and bowls of daal floating in pure ghee. Half the domestic circuit played with a visible belly, and fitness training was just running endless boundary laps until your shins splinted.
I knew exactly where that lazy lifestyle ended—a botched ACL surgery and a dead career before twenty-three.
"Eggs, Mom. Daily," I had muttered three months ago, pushing away the bowl of heavily buttered parathas in our kitchen. "Boiled ones. At least th—"
"Three eggs?" My mom, Harpreet, had paused mid-swing, her wooden rolling pin dripping with ghee as she stared at me. "Kabir, you are eight years old, not a muscle-man from the circus! Too much heat will ruin your stomach. Eat the paratha, I put fresh white—"
"I need meat for dinner too," I interrupted, keeping my voice quiet but stubborn. "Chicken or mutton. Every single ni—"
"Hey Waheguru!" She slapped her hand against her forehead, turning toward the living room. "Listen to him, Harpal! Your son has gone completely mad since joining that cricket batch. Meat every night? You think we run a butcher shop? You need milk and soaked almonds for brainpower, not—"
"Almonds won’t stop my shoulders from aching after three hours of bowling, Mom," I said, peeling the shell off the one boiled egg she’d begrudgingly made. "Just make the chicken. Skip the butter if it’s too much—"
"Shut up and eat," she grumbled.
She called me a stubborn mule to my dad for a week, but by the second month, a plate of lean, boiled chicken strips and sprouted lentils was sitting right next to my glass of buttermilk every evening. She didn’t understand the physical demands, but she couldn’t stand seeing her son come home with bruised palms and empty energy.
I combined that with thirty minutes of core stability drills and wrist-strengthening exercises every night in the society garden while the neighbors thought I was just playing. It worked. I felt lighter on my feet, and my recovery times were twice as fast as the other boys.
I turned the corner, the massive expanse of Azad Maidan opening up through the fading morning fog.
The place was absolute chaos. Dozens of different school pitches were laid out side-by-side on the same massive public common. Canvas pavilion tents were pitched everywhere, and hundreds of kids in white uniforms were jogging, stretching, or shouting. The air was thick with the smell of damp grass, leather ball grease, and wood smoke from the tea stalls near the pavement.
I rolled my cycle up to the Shardashram tent, unhooking my heavy canvas bag. Nitin and Kamlesh were already there, unzipping their gear, their faces incredibly tight.
Along the boundary line, local sports reporters from the Marathi newspapers were already setting up plastic chairs, lifting their cameras next to veteran talent selectors who sat with standard black notebooks resting on their knees.
Nitin jogged back from the center square, a big grin on his face. "We won the toss, re! The pitch has some loose dirt, but the sun is coming out hot. It’ll dry fast. We’re—"
"Batting?" Kamlesh asked, his voice shaking a bit as he pulled on his inner gloves.
"Yeah, batting first," Nitin nodded, tossing his cap onto a kit bag. He looked straight at me. "Pads on, Kabir. Anjuman’s opening bowler is already warming up at the far end. He’s bowling proper quick today. Don’t give him an ear—"
"I’m ready," I said.
I sat down on an old wooden crate and unzipped my canvas bag to get organized. The linseed oil we had applied last night had soaked deeply into the wood, giving the blade a solid, dense weight. I took the grip wraps out and checked the handle tension. Everything was tight.
Kamlesh sat on the bench next to me, his breath coming out fast. He was struggling with his left thigh guard, his fingers fumbling with the elastic straps because his hands were shaking so much.
"Here," I said, reaching over to pull the strap tight for him. "Don’t choke it. It’ll cut off your circulation when you sprint."
"Thanks," Kamlesh muttered, looking out toward the main boundary line. "Look at the tent across from us, Kabir. Their coach is already shouting at their bowlers. They look massive."
"They’re just twelve," I said, clicking my own leg guard buckles into place with a sharp snap. "They look the same size as Vinay."
"Vinay doesn’t bowl 110, re," Kamlesh said, leaning forward with his head in his hands.
Nitin walked back into the tent, holding a plastic bottle of water and a piece of chalk. He bent down and drew a rough diamond shape on the grass inside the tent, pointing at it with the chalk.
"Listen up, both of you," Nitin said, looking at me and Kamlesh. "The boundary on the railway track side is very short today. If you get a loose ball on the leg side, don’t just tap it. Push it hard. But the off-side grass is very thick because of the morning mist. If you drive along the ground there, you have to run for the second one immediately. Don’t wait to see if it reaches the rope."
"What about the spin?" I asked, looking up from my laces.
"Their left-armer will bowl from the far end after the sixth over," Nitin said, wiping the chalk dust on his whites. "He likes to angle it into the right-hander. But forget the spin for now. Your only job is to survive the new ball. If we lose a wicket in the first three overs, the pressure will destroy our middle order."
Achrekar sir walked into the tent, holding his old wooden clipboard. The entire tent went dead silent instantly. Nobody moved.
He didn’t look at the chalk drawing on the floor. He just looked at my bat, checked the thickness of the edge with his thumb, and then looked at Kamlesh.
"The Anjuman bowlers are going to bowl fast because they see an eight-year-old opening," Achrekar sir said, his gravelly voice flat and completely serious. "They will try to scare you with short balls. If you get scared and look at the boundary line, you are playing into their hands. Keep your eyes on the deck."
He tapped the clipboard against his leg and looked out toward the center pitch.
"Umpires are walking out," the coach said. "Go."
Across the open turf, about eighty yards away, the Anjuman-I-Islam squad was breaking their huddle. Their opening bowler—a tall, lean twelve-year-old named Baig—was already running through his bowling markers, violently rubbing a brand-new red leather ball against his trousers.
Kamlesh picked up his gloves, his teeth chattering slightly as he adjusted his helmet. "Kabir... look at his stride. He’s running in fa—"
"Let him run," I said, standing up and gripping my bat firmly with a tight V-grip. I looked across the field, watching Baig’s shadow-practice jump. "He’s dropping his left shoulder early during his stride. He’s going to try a short bouncer on ball one. Watch his wrist, not his pace."
"Wait, how do you kn—"
"Let’s go," I interrupted, lifting the willow onto my shoulder as the umpires reached the wickets. "Time to show them how a real opener plays."
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