SHREYA'S POV:
Presenting to investors? Easy.
Pitching to MIT grads with resting-judgy faces? Child's play.
Explaining biometric fatigue tracking to cricket coaches who think Excel is "too technical"?
God help me.
The next ten days moved like code on a clean compile — fast, sharp, and impossible to stop.
We booked flights to Bengaluru, pulled back-to-back nights rebuilding the CoreAthlete interface for non-tech eyes, and I somehow aged five years in ten days from caffeine and mental stress alone.
"You're going to have to explain what it does in under two minutes," Ananya reminded me as she paced the living room, reviewing our pitch deck for the fifth time.
"I know what an elevator pitch is."
"You also know elevators don't exist in the NCA auditorium, right? You'll be on a cricket field surrounded by men who haven't opened a science textbook since Class 10."
She wasn't wrong.
I'd spent the last week researching every potential player that might be at the presentation — reading performance data, analysing match clips, even skimming old press conference videos. Not because I was nervous.
Okay. I was absolutely nervous.
These weren't just players. These were national icons. Superstars. Social media demigods. Some of the best athletes in the world — and most of them probably saw "AI" as a buzzword from a tech bro podcast.
I needed to translate science into cricket. And fast.
Two days before our flight, I was on the floor of my apartment, surrounded by printouts of telemetry graphs and design prototypes, when Dev strolled in, holding his laptop like a plate.
"They're going to ask about player privacy," he said without preamble. "Specifically, if the system tracks mood or emotional state."
I looked up. "It doesn't. Yet."
"Say that last part only in your head."
"Right."
"And don't mention that feature about predicted career longevity," he added. "We don't want the captain thinking you're trying to tell him when to retire."
"Noted."
He sat down beside me. "You okay?"
I paused. "Yeah. Just... trying not to be the woman who walks into the holy temple of cricket and tells the high priests that their gods need performance analytics."
He smirked. "You'll kill it. Just remember—"
"Science first. Cricket second. Ego third," I finished.
He nodded. "And wear something not black. You're meeting athletes, not pitching to Death Eaters."
I rolled my eyes but made a mental note to pack something less... dystopian.
By the time we boarded the flight to Bengaluru, I had memorized every slide, every data point, and every technical term I would absolutely not be using in front of the cricket board.
As the plane taxied, I pulled out my phone one last time to review the updated BCCI email with the final meeting list.
One line stood out:
Athletes present: S. Gill, H. Pandya, I. Kishan, A. Sharma...
My thumb hovered.
S. Gill.
I'd seen clips of him, of course. Smooth bat swing, fast feet, deadpan interviews. He had the kind of face that made people care less about cricket and more about camera angles. But beyond the hype, I'd seen something else in his game — small inconsistencies that my model could probably catch before even he did.
Would he listen? Probably not.
Would he challenge everything I say? Almost definitely.
Would I be ready?
Absolutely.
Because I wasn't walking into the NCA to be liked.
I was walking in to change the game.
Because I wasn't walking into the NCA to flirt with fanboys or tiptoe around egos.
I wasn't there to be the woman who "knew tech" in a room full of men who knew "sport."
I was there because my model could tell them things even their coaches couldn't.
I was there to hand them the future — whether they were ready for it or not.
And if Shubman Gill had a problem with that?
Well, he'd just have to keep up.