The bat lived propped against the wall beside the front door.
It had always lived there. Like it was also waiting to go somewhere.
A Cosco training bat — the cheap end, bought secondhand from the shop near my father's bus depot. It had a crack running up the splice. My father had wrapped it in electrical tape twice. First time, a shop man did it and charged fifty rupees. Second time, my father did it himself on a Sunday — sitting at the kitchen table with his reading glasses on, taking his time, the way he took his time with anything he fixed with his hands.
On the morning of January second, I picked it up.
It was a lot lighter than I expected.
My hands remembered a professional Kookaburra Ghost — properly balanced, full weight, the kind you swing for a decade until it becomes part of your arm. This felt like holding a ruler. I shifted my grip and tried a practice swing.
[System: Grip: adult-modified, non-standard for age. Stance: advanced. Feet: correct. Recommendation — find a pitch and start. Template: 1%.]
'Yeah. I'm getting there.'
I went out to the chawl courtyard.
Early enough that only two people were out.
Mr. Pande from flat 4C doing his morning loops — three metres one way, three metres back, every day, like he was checking whether the courtyard had changed since yesterday. And Shiva, who was eight years old and lived two doors down, standing near the water tank doing absolutely nothing with the complete focus of someone who had decided that was his whole plan for the day.
He watched me walk out with the bat.
He watched me take my stance.
He watched me begin shadow batting — proper shadow batting, full stroke, weight transfer, follow-through.
"What are you doing?" he said.
"Batting practice."
"There's no ball."
"I know."
He considered this.
"...That's stupid."
It was not stupid. Shadow batting is something every serious cricketer does — muscle memory, footwork, stroke mechanics without an actual delivery to rush you. Tendulkar did it. Dravid still probably does it in his sleep.
But explaining that to an eight-year-old at six in the morning was not a fight I needed.
I worked through every shot I owned.
Cover drive — weight forward, elbow high, full face. Pull — back and across, head steady, bat face closed. Cut — hard, late, off the back foot. Sweep — front knee down, face open. Twenty minutes. All of it.
After twenty minutes I had a clear picture.
Good news: the coordination was there. The eye was okay. Back foot movement was surprisingly solid.
Bad news: arms short, reach on the off side was thin, and the sweep looked like I was swatting a fly off the ground.
'Three months. Maybe four. I can correct the technique in four months if Nair takes me on.'
Shiva had moved closer without me noticing. He was now about one metre away, watching my hands like I was doing a card trick.
"You were bad at cricket before," he said.
I paused mid-drive. "Excuse me?"
"Before the December break. Nikhil hit you for five runs in a row and you cried behind the water tank."
'...great.'
"I've been practising," I said.
He looked at the cracked Cosco. Long, slow look.
"With... that?"
"You work with what you have."
He sat with this philosophy for a moment. Then, with the gravity of a tiny judge: "My cousin has a real bat. It's red."
I went back to my cover drives.
◆ ◆ ◆
School started on the fifth of January.
Municipal School No. 7.
Three floors, mustard-yellow paint, ceiling fans that worked in winter and quit in summer, and that particular floor cleaning smell that existed in every government school and was sold nowhere publicly.
I had spent four years of my first childhood here. I knew every shortcut, every teacher's habit, which corner of the ground the Class 8 boys claimed at lunch.
What was different now was me.
I stood in the gate on the first morning and just — stopped for a second.
'Nine more years in this building. I've already done four of them. Five more to go, then Ranji, then the IPL, then —'
'Stop. Today you're ten and you're in Class 5. Act like it.'
I went to class.
◆ ◆ ◆
The Class 5 cricket team trials were the last Friday of January.
Fourteen boys.
I had watched them at every break session for three weeks. Six could bat. Three could bowl without hurting themselves. Two fielders who wouldn't drop everything they touched.
Nikhil was the best of them. Good eye, quick hands, just a bit too hungry for the big shot when a straight ball would do. He'd grow out of it, or he wouldn't, and he'd be fine either way.
The trials were run by Mr. Deshmukh, who taught mathematics and had been given cricket coaching the way these things get given to teachers — meaning nobody asked if he wanted it and he didn't say no. He had sandals and a register. His method: bowl soft half-volleys and see who made contact.
Six boys batted before me.
Two were decent. The others were what you'd expect from ten-year-olds who'd had no real coaching.
"Sharma! Arjun Sharma!"
I walked to the crease.
Took guard. Looked up. Rough outfield, pitch sloping toward the drain at mid-off, short boundary on the leg side.
Filed it all away.
Mr. Deshmukh bowled. Friendly half-volley on middle stump — the kind that exists in the universe specifically to be driven. I drove it. Properly. Weight forward, elbow up, full face, along the ground past mid-off.
It ran all the way to the boundary wall.
Silence.
Six boys in the field. All staring at where the ball ended up. Then staring at me.
Mr. Deshmukh looked at the ball. Then at his register. Then at the ball again.
He bowled again — shorter this time. I went back, rocked onto the back foot, punched it wide of mid-on. Clean. Controlled.
Third ball — wide outside off, asking for the cut. I cut it. Hard. Low. Wide of backward point. It skimmed the ground before anyone moved.
He wrote something in his register.
'Select me. I need real matches. I need the System to start counting.'
Four more balls. I hit three to the rope. Left one alone outside off — it was drifting down the slope and would have hit off stump off the angle. I was not getting out to an accidental good delivery in a school trial.
When I walked back, Nikhil was looking at me with that specific expression. The one people get when they have to revise their entire opinion of you in under a minute.
"When did you — " he started.
"Holidays," I said.
"What happened in the holidays?"
"I practised."
"With the broken bat?"
"Yes."
He stared at me for another second.
"Weird," he said. But the way you say it when you're actually a little impressed and not ready to admit it yet.
[System: Performance logged. ]
[School trial: selected. ]
[Shots: 7 faced, 6 clean. ]
[Boundaries: 4. ]
[Template: +0.2% → 1.2%. ]
[Objective complete — play first competitive match. ]
[New objective: score 50+ in a real match.]
To be Continued