*Disclaimer: Fan rewrite of "Cricket: Template System" by LuFFy_158 on WebNovel. Original story and concept belong to the author. Real personalities used fictionally and respectfully.*
---
The first sensation was not sight or sound, but a smell.
It was a complex, long-forgotten perfume: the slightly chalky scent of whitewashed walls, the sharp tang of mothballs from the wooden wardrobe, a faint, sweet-musty note of old comic books, and underneath it all, the unmistakable aroma of his mother's dal tadka bubbling in a kitchen he hadn't lived in for fifteen years.
Shivam Dube's eyes snapped open.
He wasn't in his cramped apartment in Dadar, Mumbai, with its view of a chawl rooftop and the incessant hum of the local train rattling past every twelve minutes. The air he was breathing wasn't filtered by an AC unit. It was thick, warm, and humid — stirred by the lazy *thwack-thwack-thwack* of a three-bladed ceiling fan that desperately needed oiling.
The ceiling above him was a familiar, water-stained off-white. There was a crack in the plaster near the window, running diagonally from the sill toward the light fitting. He had stared at that crack as a boy, convinced it looked like the Wankhede's boundary rope seen from above.
That crack. He knew that crack.
*No.*
He sat bolt upright. The cotton bedsheet, thin and faded blue, pooled around his waist. He looked at his hands. They were small. They were impossibly, terrifyingly small — smooth, without the thick calluses on his right palm from thousands of hours of batting, without the slightly swollen ring finger that had never quite healed right after that fielding incident in the Ranji semi-final.
They were a child's hands.
*This is not possible.*
His breath came fast and shallow. He swung his legs over the side of the cot. His feet dangled above the floor. He scrambled down and stood. The world seemed enormous. The ceiling was too high. The wardrobe was too tall. The small wooden desk by the window was at the wrong height. He was looking at it from *lower down.*
He crossed to the small, scratched steel mirror above the washbasin in the corner of the room.
The face that stared back was not his.
Not the 30-year-old Shivam Dube — the broad-shouldered, heavy-set man with tired, intent eyes, the permanent stubble he'd stopped bothering to shape, and the slight heaviness around his jaw from years of a cricketer's high-calorie diet. The face in the mirror was round, with chubby cheeks and big, terrified, impossibly clear brown eyes. The hair was a thick, unruly mop. It was him. His 10-year-old self. The small dimple on his left cheek — the one his mother still pinched at family functions — was right there, unchanged.
He reached up a small, trembling hand. The boy in the mirror did the same.
He touched his cheek. The skin was soft, elastic, *new.*
He backed away, breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
*"This is impossible. This is... I'm insane. I've had a psychotic break."*
He turned back to the room, desperate for something to anchor him. His eyes swept the walls.
To his left, tacked up with rusting drawing pins, was God himself. Sachin Tendulkar, bat raised high, the MRF sticker a slash of red against his whites, acknowledging a century. Shivam's 30-year-old self had met the man once — a brief, awed handshake at a BCCI event — but the 10-year-old in him who had *prayed* to this poster... his throat tightened. Next to Sachin was The Wall. Rahul Dravid, mid-cover-drive, a portrait of impossible grace and quiet focus. And there, grinning maniacally, was Sehwag. Ganguly. Kumble. Srinath. The whole pantheon of a boy's devotion, their colours faded by the sea-salt air blowing off the Arabian Sea, their edges curled.
In the corner, by the small wooden desk, sat his first cricket bat. A heavy, Kashmir willow bat with a battered sticker — too big for a 10-year-old, because he had *insisted* on a full-size bat when his father had wanted to buy him a junior one. He'd carried it like a war-standard every time he went to play in the compound.
He walked to the desk slowly. There was a newspaper on it. The *Times of India.* He picked it up.
The date at the top read: **March 14, 2001.**
He sat down. He read the date again. Then again.
*2001.*
He was 10 years old. He was in his family's flat in Dadar, Mumbai. And it was 2001.
He put the newspaper down. His mind — the 30-year-old mind — began to work despite the shock. It began to list things. A compulsive habit from years of reading cricket situations, planning for the next ball, thinking three overs ahead.
*What do I know?*
He knew he was 10. He knew the year was 2001, confirmed by the newspaper and the Dravid poster — the one from the 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy. He knew he was in his family's Dadar flat.
He knew, with a certainty that was simultaneously wonderful and terrifying, that his 30-year-old mind was sitting inside his 10-year-old body.
*Why? How?*
The questions floated with no answers. He had no memory of dying. He remembered his last day clearly. The Wankhede nets. A conversation with a selector that had left him feeling like a door had been quietly, permanently closed. The local train home. His flat. The TV. Sleep.
And then — this.
His hands moved instinctively to his left knee.
*But if this is 2001...*
Slowly, with a dreadful, electric anticipation, he ran his small fingers over his left knee. He felt for it — the long, ugly scar from the surgeon's knife. The permanent ache that had woken him at 3 AM for years. The slight weakness that never went away no matter how hard he rehabbed.
There was nothing.
Just the smooth, unbroken, resilient skin of a 10-year-old boy.
He pulled up the loose pajama leg, his heart hammering. He stared.
A perfect, scrawny, 10-year-old knee — with a small healing scrape from yesterday's gully cricket in the compound below. No scar. No trace of the injury that had defined and then slowly destroyed his career. The injury hadn't happened yet. It was years away — a mistimed pull in a Ranji Trophy match, a bad landing, a torn ligament that had taken everything from him before he had properly built anything.
Shivam Dube stared at his knee, and the last vestiges of shock burned away.
A new emotion took its place.
It wasn't just confusion anymore. It was excitement. No — more than that. It was *euphoria.* The wild, ecstatic joy of a condemned man given a full pardon. He had years. *Years* of knowledge. He knew which pitches suited which techniques. He knew which coaches' advice to take and which to throw away. He knew about core strength, modern physiotherapy, plyometrics and load management — things barely whispered about in 2001's cricketing circles.
He knew the IPL would be born. He knew which formats would come to dominate the sport. He knew which young names in the age-group circuit right now would go on to become legends. He knew who to learn from and when.
He got to his feet.
The boy in the mirror was no longer terrified. He was *intense.* A 30-year-old's calculating, quiet focus stared out from a 10-year-old's clear brown eyes.
He looked from his perfect knee to the posters on his wall. To Sachin. To Dravid. To the pristine bat in the corner. He thought of his wasted career — the injury, the years of fighting back, the near-misses, the talent that had quietly gone nowhere without ever finding the stage it deserved.
He made a vow. Not to his 10-year-old self, but to the bitter, quietly devastated 30-year-old man he had been.
*Not this time.*
---
He was still standing at the mirror when the door swung open.
"Shivam! Are you still sleeping? It's almost seven!"
His mother. Her voice. The same quick, slightly exasperated tone she'd used every morning of his childhood — a blend of love and practical urgency, as if time itself needed managing.
He turned. She stood in the doorway — his mother, Sunita Dube, precisely as he remembered her from this age: the neat bun, the cotton salwar kameez, the small bindi slightly askew because she never checked the mirror in the morning rush. She was young. *So* young. He had forgotten she had once been young.
A very strange, very powerful emotion hit him in the chest. He stood very still.
"Baba, what's wrong? Why are you standing there like a statue?" She stepped in, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. "No fever. Did you sleep badly?"
"I'm fine, Aai," he said. His voice came out thin — a child's voice, high and unbroken. He was startled by it.
She looked at him with a mother's x-ray vision. "You're not fine. You look like you've seen something. Bad dream?"
He thought about how to answer that.
"Something like that," he said. "I'm okay. I'll wash up and come for breakfast."
She studied him for one more second. Then she nodded. "Five minutes. Your paratha will get cold."
She left. He listened to her footsteps retreat down the corridor toward the kitchen.
He stood alone in his room, in his small body, in the year 2001.
He breathed in. He breathed out.
He looked at the bat in the corner. Then he walked to the window. Through the compound, in the narrow lane outside the colony wall, Mumbai was already alive — the vegetable vendor, the morning walkers, the school children dragging bags. Always moving. Never waiting.
He put his small hand on the windowsill.
*Alright,* he thought. *You wanted a second chance. You have one.*
He closed his eyes. He thought of everything he knew — every technique absorbed, every match watched, every piece of knowledge about a sport he had dedicated his entire life to without ever getting the reward he had worked for.
He opened his eyes.
*Don't waste it.*
He turned, picked up the bat from the corner, and felt its weight in hands that were, for now, too small to hold it properly. But that would change. Everything would change.
He had time. He had knowledge. He had a knee that was whole and perfect and *his.*
Shivam Dube held the bat, and for the first time in a very long time — in either life — he smiled.
---
*Then, as if the universe had been waiting for precisely this moment of acceptance:*
A soft, mechanical *chime* sounded inside his head. Not outside. *Inside.* Like a notification from a phone embedded directly behind his eyes.
He froze.
A translucent panel appeared in his vision — overlaid on the wall of his room as clearly as a cinema screen, yet visible only to him, existing in the space between seeing and knowing.
```
════════════════════════════════════
★ TEMPLATE SYSTEM ★
INITIALIZATION COMPLETE
════════════════════════════════════
HOST : SHIVAM DUBE
STATUS : Active | Age 10 | Year 2001
SYSTEM FUNCTION :
The Template System grants the Host
access to Skills, Attributes, and
Frameworks of elite cricketers.
Templates are not given freely.
They are STUDIED. They are EARNED.
They are BUILT — ball by ball,
session by session.
The System provides the map.
The Host must walk the road.
════════════════════════════════════
CURRENT HOST ATTRIBUTES
════════════════════════════════════
Batting [F] Foundational
Bowling [F] Foundational
Fielding [F] Foundational
Fitness [F] Foundational
Cricket IQ [B+] Advanced
(Retained from previous life)
════════════════════════════════════
FIRST TEMPLATE UNLOCKED
════════════════════════════════════
[ THE ALL-ROUNDER FRAMEWORK ]
Batting Style : Aggressive Middle-Order
Bowling Style : Right-arm Fast-Medium
Signature Skill : POWER HITTING [Locked]
Bonus Attribute : MATCH AWARENESS [Active]
════════════════════════════════════
CAREER RECORD (Current)
════════════════════════════════════
Matches Played : 0
Runs Scored : 0
Wickets Taken : 0
Catches : 0
════════════════════════════════════
SYSTEM MESSAGE
════════════════════════════════════
"You have been given something rare,
Host. Do not squander it.
The game does not forgive wasted
talent twice."
════════════════════════════════════
```
The panel hung in his vision for a long moment. Then, with another soft chime, it faded.
Shivam Dube stood in his childhood bedroom, in his 10-year-old body, in the year 2001, holding a bat that was too heavy for him.
A template system. A second chance. A perfect knee.
From the kitchen came his mother's voice: *"Shivam! Paratha is getting cold!"*
He set the bat carefully against the wall. He took one last look at the poster of Sachin — God himself, mid-celebration, blade raised to the sky.
*One day,* he thought. *I'll share that field with you.*
He walked out of the room toward breakfast.
---
**— End of Chapter 1 —**
---
```
★ CAREER STATS — END OF CHAPTER 1 ★
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