The next morning arrived with an unpleasant realization.

Sahil’s body hurt.

Not the satisfying soreness that followed a productive batting session.

Not the fatigue that came after a difficult match.

This was different.

His legs felt heavy.

His shoulders felt stiff.

Even his wrists carried traces of yesterday’s training.

Apparently spending hours making decisions was somehow exhausting.

The realization felt unfair.

Thinking wasn’t supposed to hurt.

Yet district cricket continued proving that many things in life were unfair.

---

The previous day’s lesson remained fresh in his mind.

More fresh than he would’ve liked.

Most weaknesses felt obvious after discovery.

Once someone pointed them out, they became impossible to ignore.

Shot selection was proving exactly like that.

The problem followed him everywhere.

Even while brushing his teeth that morning, he found himself replaying deliveries from training.

The slightly short ball outside off stump.

The hesitation.

The uncertainty.

The awkward connection.

For years, he had assumed batting worked in a simple order.

See ball.

Hit ball.

Score runs.

District cricket had kindly informed him that reality was considerably more complicated.

---

The walk toward the stadium felt unusually quiet.

The roads remained mostly empty.

The morning air carried a pleasant chill.

A few shopkeepers prepared their stores for the day.

Several school students waited near bus stops.

Normal life continued around him.

Yet Sahil’s thoughts remained fixed on cricket.

More specifically—

on a weakness.

---

The district ground appeared almost deserted when he arrived.

Only a few players had reached the venue.

Groundsmen moved across the outfield.

A pair of fast bowlers stretched near the practice wickets.

Apart from that, the stadium belonged mostly to silence.

Sahil appreciated moments like this.

The quiet before training.

The calm before noise.

The opportunity to think.

Unfortunately, thinking usually led him back to the same problem.

Shot selection.

---

He settled near the boundary rope and placed his kit bag beside him.

For several minutes he simply watched the groundsmen work.

The repetitive movement felt oddly relaxing.

The roller moved slowly across the wicket.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Patient.

Consistent.

Without shortcuts.

The sight reminded him of something.

Improvement rarely happened dramatically.

Most improvements looked exactly like that.

Slow.

Repetitive.

Boring.

Yet effective.

---

A familiar blue glow suddenly appeared.

Sahil immediately sighed.

The system had excellent timing.

Or terrible timing.

Depending on perspective.

---

The screen expanded before him.

Lines of text appeared gradually.

One after another.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

ANALYSIS REVIEW

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Primary Weakness

SHOT SELECTION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Recent Progress

INSUFFICIENT

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Recommendation

TARGETED TRAINING REQUIRED

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sahil stared at the screen.

Then frowned.

The wording felt unusually direct.

Even for the system.

---

The screen flickered.

More text appeared.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

NEW MISSION GENERATED

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

That immediately captured his attention.

New missions usually meant opportunities.

Or suffering.

Often both.

---

The blue screen expanded further.

Additional details appeared.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SHOT SELECTION MISSION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Objective

Practice Each Core Shot

300 Times

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Current Progress

Drive: 0 / 300

Pull: 0 / 300

Cut: 0 / 300

Defensive Block: 0 / 300

Glance: 0 / 300

Flick: 0 / 300

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Reward

SHOT INSTINCT

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

For several moments, Sahil simply stared.

Then read it again.

And again.

Just to ensure he wasn’t misunderstanding.

---

Three hundred times.

Each.

---

The number looked ridiculous.

Actually—

ridiculous was probably too kind.

The mission looked insane.

---

A normal practice session contained maybe fifty to sixty meaningful batting repetitions.

Perhaps more.

Perhaps less.

Depending on the drill.

Yet the system wanted three hundred repetitions for every major shot.

---

The math alone felt painful.

---

"Why do you look offended?"

The voice arrived from behind.

Predictably.

Danish.

---

Sahil pointed toward the invisible screen.

"System."

The left-hander nodded.

Again.

As though that explanation made perfect sense.

At this point, Sahil was becoming concerned about how easily Danish accepted strange things.

---

"Bad mission?"

"Depends."

"That sounds like yes."

"It wants me to practice six different shots three hundred times each."

Danish blinked.

Then blinked again.

---

"That’s disgusting."

"Exactly."

"I’m actually angry on your behalf."

The answer earned a laugh.

Mostly because it was true.

---

For several moments, both players sat quietly.

Then Danish glanced toward the practice wickets.

"You know what the worst part is?"

"What?"

"The system is probably right."

---

Sahil hated how quickly he agreed.

Because the left-hander was absolutely correct.

---

Yesterday’s training had exposed something important.

His issue wasn’t hitting the ball.

His issue wasn’t timing.

His issue wasn’t power.

His issue was certainty.

Recognition.

Decision-making.

And the only way to improve those things was repetition.

A lot of repetition.

Apparently three hundred repetitions.

---

Training officially began shortly afterward.

The squad gathered near the nets.

The usual drills followed.

Fielding.

Fitness.

Warm-ups.

The standard torture disguised as preparation.

---

Yet throughout the entire session, Sahil found himself thinking about the mission.

Not because he wanted to.

Because the numbers refused to leave his head.

Three hundred.

Three hundred.

Three hundred.

The figure seemed to follow him everywhere.

---

Eventually the batting session began.

And almost immediately, Sahil made a decision.

If the mission required repetitions—

then repetitions were exactly what it would receive.

---

The first net session focused entirely on drives.

Nothing else.

Just drives.

---

The decision confused several teammates.

Especially when he ignored perfectly good scoring opportunities.

---

A short ball arrived.

Drive.

A wider ball arrived.

Drive.

A full ball arrived.

Drive.

---

The results weren’t always pretty.

Sometimes the connection felt clean.

Sometimes it felt awkward.

Sometimes it felt terrible.

Yet the objective wasn’t perfection.

The objective was familiarity.

---

After twenty minutes, a notification appeared.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SHOT SELECTION MISSION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Drive Progress

27 / 300

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Sahil nearly laughed.

---

Twenty-seven.

---

The number felt insulting.

---

He had spent almost half an hour hitting drives.

And somehow remained nowhere.

The mission suddenly felt much larger.

---

The coach eventually noticed.

Of course he noticed.

District coaches noticed everything.

---

The older man watched quietly for several overs.

Then stepped closer.

"You’ve played thirty drives."

The statement wasn’t a question.

---

Sahil nodded.

The coach folded his arms.

"Why?"

---

Explaining system missions to normal people remained difficult.

Mostly because normal people couldn’t see them.

---

"Practice."

The answer sounded weak.

Even to him.

---

The coach remained silent.

Then surprisingly—

he nodded.

---

"Good."

The response caught Sahil off guard.

---

The older man pointed toward the net.

"Most players practice batting."

Another pause.

"Very few practice specific shots."

The distinction felt important.

---

The coach continued.

"Repetition creates confidence."

The players nearby listened carefully.

Including Sahil.

---

"Confidence creates commitment."

Another pause.

Then:

"Commitment creates good decisions."

---

The lesson felt familiar.

Because it connected directly to yesterday’s weakness.

---

For the rest of the session, Sahil focused entirely on repetition.

Not runs.

Not boundaries.

Not style.

Repetition.

---

By lunchtime, the progress finally looked respectable.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SHOT SELECTION MISSION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Drive: 81 / 300

Pull: 14 / 300

Cut: 9 / 300

Defensive Block: 23 / 300

Glance: 0 / 300

Flick: 0 / 300

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The numbers remained intimidating.

Yet for the first time, they felt possible.

---

The afternoon session proved even more exhausting.

Not physically.

Mentally.

Because every shot now carried intention.

Every movement carried purpose.

The mind never truly relaxed.

---

By the time training finally ended, the sun had already begun descending toward the horizon.

Most players left immediately.

Sahil remained.

Alone.

Batting.

Again.

And again.

And again.

---

The empty practice net felt strangely familiar.

Almost comforting.

The same place where he practiced yorkers.

The same place where he learned slower-ball recognition.

The same place where improvement quietly happened.

---

The repetition continued.

Drive.

Drive.

Drive.

---

The ball machine fed another delivery.

Then another.

Then another.

---

Hours passed.

The sky darkened.

The stadium lights flickered on.

The world grew quieter.

Yet Sahil remained there.

Practicing.

Learning.

Building familiarity.

One repetition at a time.

---

Eventually, a final notification appeared.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SHOT SELECTION MISSION

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Drive Progress

128 / 300

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Current Evaluation

Shot Recognition Speed

Improving

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Reward

SHOT INSTINCT

LOCKED

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The screen faded.

Leaving only the empty practice net behind.

---

One hundred twenty-eight.

Still far from completion.

Still far from the reward.

Yet closer than before.

---

As Sahil packed his equipment and prepared to leave, a thought crossed his mind.

The system never rewarded shortcuts.

It rewarded mastery.

And mastery was usually boring.

Repetitive.

Uncomfortable.

The sort of work nobody celebrated.

---

Which was probably why so few people achieved it.

---

The lights of the stadium glowed softly behind him as he walked toward the exit.

Tomorrow would bring more repetitions.

More training.

More progress.

Slow progress.

Yet progress nonetheless.

And somewhere beyond those three hundred repetitions waited a skill called Shot Instinct.

For now, that was enough reason to keep going.

---

Mission Status

Drive: 128 / 300

Pull: 14 / 300

Cut: 9 / 300

Defensive Block: 23 / 300

Glance: 0 / 300

Flick: 0 / 300

Reward: Shot Instinct (Locked)

The journey had begun.

Thank you for reading Cricket Ascend System! Every review, Power Stone, and comment helps this novel grow and reach more readers. Sahil’s journey is only getting started, and many exciting matches, rivals, missions, and challenges are waiting ahead.

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