Free Web NovelChapter 2: Chater 2: PLAYING IN THE GARDEN
The society playing garden was completely empty. The monsoon drizzle had stopped about an hour ago, leaving the manicured grass lawn soaked and dark. A flat, concrete recreational path wrapped around the grass, still shiny and slick from the water.
My dad, Harpal, walked onto the concrete patch, tossing a cheap red plastic cricket ball in his hand. He looked relaxed, like any normal dad taking his kid out for a random bit of playtime after being stuck indoors all afternoon.
"Alright, Kabir," he said, stepping back about ten paces until his heels hit the edge of the stone walking track. "The concrete is a bit slippery, so don’t try to swing like a maniac. Just try to get your bat on the ball, okay?"
"Just bowl, Dad," I squeaked.
My voice was still ridiculously high-pitched, but my brain was completely serious. I stood on the flat concrete, facing him.
The moment I looked up, the 5% Sachin Tendulkar template didn’t take over my limbs like a robot script. Instead, a hyper-clear mental blueprint flashed in my mind. It was Sachin’s absolute experience of balance. I knew exactly how my feet needed to line up parallel to the imaginary stumps behind me. I manually forced my tiny, chubby five-year-old fingers to interlock into a perfect V-grip on the plastic handle. I dropped my weight, lowering my center of gravity so I wouldn’t slip on the damp concrete.
My dad paused, his hand dropping to his side. He stared at me, his eyebrows stitching together. As a guy who ran a premium sports shop supplying half the elite school teams in Dadar, he knew what bad posture looked like. Most five-year-olds stood like crooked sticks. I looked like a textbook.
"Uh... Kabir?" he asked, a bit amused but mostly confused. "Where did you see that stance? Did you copy one of the Ranji boys who came to the shop last week?"
"No one," I squeaked, tap-tapping the plastic bat on the damp floor. "Just bowl."
He laughed, shook his head, and tossed the ball underarm. It was a slow, floating delivery meant for a baby to clumsily whack.
To my eyes, the ball was practically crawling. My enhanced eye-tracking reflexes locked onto the red plastic sphere, calculating the exact trajectory. I didn’t swing wildly. My left foot instinctively stepped forward, planting right beside the bouncing ball. I kept my head dead still over my shoulder, and swung the bat down in a perfectly straight, vertical line.
Crack!
It wasn’t a dull, plastic thud. The contact was so perfectly centered on the sweet spot that it made an explosive, sharp snap. The ball rocketed off the plastic blade, flying straight past my dad’s legs and vanishing into the garden bushes behind him.
My dad didn’t even turn around to look for the ball. He just stared at my feet, his jaw slightly open. "Your head... it didn’t move an inch. You didn’t even look up until the ball passed me."
A neat, quiet text box popped up in the corner of my eye.
[System Check: Stroke Execution Complete.]
[Accuracy to Sachin Tendulkar Blueprint: 93%]
[Muscle-Memory Integration Successful. Sync Rate: 5.0% -> 5.1%]
A tiny, warm jolt of energy settled into my forearms. The shot felt just a fraction of a millimeter more natural now. I grinned. It’s all on me. If I practice perfectly, the sync goes up.
"Do it again!" I shouted, my small chest pumping with adrenaline. "Overarm, Dad! Stop holding back!"
My dad’s expression went from relaxed to deeply intense. He ran to the bushes, fished out the ball, and walked back to his mark. He didn’t smile this time. He wiped the ball on his trousers, rocked back, and delivered a proper, medium-paced overarm throw down the concrete path.
The ball came in fast, skidding low off the damp surface.
Sachin Template: Soft-handed defense framework.
My body didn’t reach forward blindly. I shifted my right foot back toward the imaginary off-stump, opened the face of the bat slightly at the last microsecond, and completely blunted the ball right into the ground at my feet. It didn’t bounce away. It deadened instantly, right under my eyes.
"Holy..." my dad muttered under his breath, taking a step back. "You didn’t slog it. You defended a skidding ball. No five-year-old does that."
"My turn to bowl," I said, dropping the plastic bat on the grass. I walked over and snatched the wet plastic ball from his hands before he could process what was happening.
"Wait, Kabir, we need to go up, your mom is—"
"Just one ball, Dad," I interrupted, walking three paces back along the concrete path.
I didn’t use my right hand. I switched the ball to my left.
The moment the wet plastic pressed against my fingers, the 5% Wasim Akram template flooded my brain with raw experience. I didn’t get puppet-controlled, but I suddenly knew how to hold a slick ball. My index and middle fingers locked perfectly across the molded plastic seam, my thumb supporting from below.
I looked at my dad, who was standing there like a stunned batsman.
I took a short, controlled three-step run-up, keeping my balance on the damp surface. I loaded my body side-on, hiding the ball behind my hip just like Wasim used to do in wet English county matches, and whipped my left arm through with a sudden, hidden snap.
Even with a light plastic ball, the wrist mechanics were flawless. The ball cut through the air, hit a damp patch on the concrete, and violently jagged inward across the imaginary right-handed batsman, completely beating my dad’s positioning and thudding hard into the stone garden bench behind him.
A massive, sharp inswinger. On a flat concrete path. Using a cheap toy.
A red warning screen suddenly filled my vision, flashing brightly.
[Warning: Host’s nervous system overloaded by executing advanced wrist-snap mechanics.]
[Stamina Depleted: 1/100. Entering acute fatigue state.]
My legs completely turned to jelly. The explosive effort of forcing my underdeveloped, five-year-old muscles to replicate a professional legend’s wrist release short-circuited my body. I collapsed backward, landing flat on my butt on the damp grass, gasping for air like I’d just run a marathon.
"Kabir!"
My dad rushed forward, his face completely pale. He didn’t look angry; he looked absolutely terrified. He scooped me up into his arms, checking my arms and legs. He was sweating despite the cool evening air. As a sports merchant, he knew the domestic cricket scene inside out. He knew that a natural right-handed batsman who could bowl a heavy, hidden-arm left-arm inswinger was basically a multi-million-dollar scouting lottery ticket.
But he also knew Mumbai club politics. If the local academy vultures or corrupt selectors saw a five-year-old doing this, they would exploit him, over-work him, and ruin his body before he hit puberty.
He carried me up the premium elevator of our society building in absolute silence, holding me tight against his shoulder.
Once we got into the spacious apartment, he dried me off with a warm towel and handed me a cup of warm milk. He locked the main door of the house, walked over to his professional gear bag, and pulled something out.
It wasn’t a dangerous, heavy leather ball. It was a high-quality, dense synthetic composite training ball—the expensive kind imported exclusively for top-tier international junior academies. It had a realistically raised, nylon-stitched seam. It had the exact weight profile of a real ball, but it was made of dense, forgiving rubber that wouldn’t break a child’s bones.
He walked over and placed the heavy rubber ball into my small left hand. My fingers naturally curled around the stitched nylon seam.
My dad knelt down, looking straight into my eyes with an incredibly serious expression.
"A hollow plastic ball is garbage, Kabir," Harpal said, his voice dropping to a sharp whisper. "It flies wherever the wind blows and ruins your finger memory. If you want to bowl left-arm swing like that, your wrist needs to learn the friction of a real seam. From tomorrow... we train inside this apartment. No one outside this family sees you play."
I gripped the raised nylon seam, a confident, tired smirk breaking across my face.
The grind starts now.
