The Delhi sun was merciless, baking the dusty ground of St. Peter’s High School.
Fifteen-year-old Rohan Roy stood at the start of his run-up, chest heaving, lungs burning as if he had swallowed hot coals. His canvas shoes—held together by cheap glue and sheer willpower—felt like lead weights.
"Come on, Roy! Are you going to bowl today or just stand there like a scarecrow?"
The mocking voice belonged to Aryan Singhania, the school team’s captain and star opening batsman. Clad in top-tier branded gear, Aryan leaned on his custom English willow bat, a smirk plastered across his face.
Rohan gritted his teeth, his grip tightening around the scuffed red leather ball. Just one good delivery, he told himself. Just bowl one perfect outswinger, and Coach will have to select me for the Under-16 trials.
He started his run-up. His strides were long, driven by pure, unfiltered passion. But as he reached the crease and leaped into his delivery stride, the worn-out sole of his left shoe slipped on the loose dirt.
His action completely fell apart. The ball slipped from his sweaty fingers, sailing high and wide, crashing directly into the practice nets yards away from the pitch.
Silence fell over the nets, followed immediately by erupting laughter from the other players.
Aryan shook his head, tapping his bat on the pitch. "A massive wide. Classic Rohan. Look, mate, fast bowling isn’t for the weak. You have no pace, no line, and you look like a stiff breeze could blow you over. Stick to carrying the water bottles."
At the edge of the nets, Coach Sharma, a stern man with a thick mustache, simply struck a red line through a clipboard. "That’s enough, Rohan. Your pace is barely touching 105 km/h. You lack stamina, and your technique is a mess. You’re out of the squad."
Rohan felt his heart drop into his stomach. "Sir, please! Just one more over. My shoe slipped—"
"My decision is final," Coach Sharma interrupted coldly. "Focus on your board exams. Cricket at this level requires money, diet, and proper gear. You have none of those."
The walk back to his small, cramped apartment in West Delhi felt like a death march. Rohan stared at his torn shoes, the words of the coach echoing in his mind.
Money. Diet. Gear.
He pushed open the creaky wooden door of his home. The smell of frying onions and spices usually comforted him, but today, it just made him feel nauseous.
His mother, Mrs. Roy, wiped her hands on her sari as she stepped out of the tiny kitchen. She took one look at his mud-stained whites, his drooping shoulders, and the taped-up cricket bat in his hand, and let out a tired sigh.
"Failed the trials again, Rohan?"
Rohan couldn’t meet her eyes. "My shoe slipped, Ma (Mother). The coach didn’t even give me a second chance."
"Good," she said, her voice firm but laced with an underlying exhaustion. "Maybe now you will finally wake up. Rohan, your father works twelve-hour shifts at the factory just to pay your school fees. Your 10th Board exams are in exactly three months."
"Ma, cricket is my life. I know I can be a great fast bowler, I just need—"
"You need to study!" she snapped, her voice rising, filled with the anxiety of a lower-middle-class parent. "Cricket won’t put food on our table, beta (Son). Only the rich or the extraordinarily lucky make it in this country. You are neither. Wash up and sit with your math books. I don’t want to see you holding that bat again."
Rohan opened his mouth to argue, but the dark circles under his mother’s eyes silenced him. He nodded numbly, retreating into the tiny room he shared with boxes of old clothes.
He sat on his thin mattress, staring at a faded poster of a legendary Indian fast bowler on his wall. A tear, hot and bitter, rolled down his cheek. He had the passion. He had the fire. But passion couldn’t buy spikes, and fire couldn’t pay for protein powder.
By 10:00 PM, the neighborhood was asleep, but Rohan’s blood was boiling.
Sneaking out of the house, he walked to the nearby community park. It was pitch black, lit only by a single, flickering yellow streetlamp near a cracked concrete pitch where local kids played tape-ball cricket.
Rohan stood at the end of the concrete strip. He didn’t have a leather ball, just an old, heavy tennis ball wrapped in electrical tape.
Stick to carrying water.
Cricket won’t put food on our table.
You have no pace.
Anger—pure, unadulterated rage—flooded his veins. He didn’t care about his torn shoes. He didn’t care about the darkness.
He sprinted toward the crease, pushing his scrawny legs faster than they had ever moved. He channeled every ounce of his frustration, every rejection, every taunt from Aryan, into his right arm.
He leaped into the air, arching his back like a drawn bow.
But as his front foot landed on the dew-covered concrete, the cheap glue on his shoe completely gave way. The sole ripped off entirely.
Rohan’s ankle twisted at a sickening angle. He was launched forward by his own momentum, completely out of control. The world spun in a blur of yellow light and dark shadows before his head slammed brutally against the edge of the concrete pitch.
A sharp, blinding pain exploded behind his eyes, and then... absolute darkness.
Drip... Drip... Drip...
Rohan groaned, his eyelids fluttering open. He expected to see the dusty ground of the local park, or perhaps the white ceiling of a hospital.
Instead, he was met with blinding white floodlights.
He bolted upright, his heart pounding. The pain in his head was completely gone. His twisted ankle felt perfectly fine. He looked around in absolute bewilderment.
He was standing in the middle of a colossal, ultra-modern cricket stadium. It was bigger than the Eden Gardens, bigger than the MCG. The stands were massive, stretching up into the night sky, but they were completely empty. There was no wind. No sound. Just an eerie, perfect silence.
"Am I... dead?" Rohan whispered, looking at his hands.
Suddenly, a sharp, mechanical chime echoed through the empty stadium, vibrating directly inside his skull.
Right in front of his eyes, the air rippled. A translucent, glowing cyan-blue screen flickered into existence, hovering exactly two feet from his face.
Lines of code scrolled rapidly across the screen before settling into bold, glowing text. An emotionless, robotic voice spoke simultaneously in his mind:
[Scanning Host...]
[DNA Match Confirmed.]
[Host Parameters Evaluated:]
[Passion: 99% (Excellent)]
[Physique: 12% (Critical Condition / Malnourished)]
[Talent: Latent]
Rohan stumbled backward, terrified. "What the hell is this?! Who’s speaking?"
The screen pulsed, ignoring his panic, as a new set of words appeared, flashing with a golden light.
[Initializing Sequence... 10%... 50%... 100%.]
[Ding!]
[Binding Successful.]
[Welcome, Host Rohan Roy. The Ultimate Cricket God System is now online.]