The chawl where the Takawales lived is now an apartment block in a middle-class Maharashtrian locality in Shukrawar Peth. Yogesh recollects, “I obeyed my grandparents advice... never touched the ceiling.” His mother Nanda chips in, “Yogesh’s father wanted to ensure that his son never took up his profession and Yogesh on his part did not falter one bit. His father always wanted Yogesh to make it big in life.”

As fate would have it, Yogesh’s father, a rickshaw driver, died in a road accident in 1998, which left a 14-year-old with a bumpy long drive ahead. Living in a one-room tenement measuring not more that 250 sq feet in a family of six, meant that life was doubly tough for Yogesh.

For Yogesh, now is the time to make a new beginning and he seems all geared up to take strike. Situations have changed and so have expectations and importantly getting himself to play with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Sanath Jayasuriya and Shaun Pollock.

If an endorsement comes, how will this youngster react? Yogesh leaves to his mother to answer that. “One needs to do well or else the fall is hard,” she says, typical of an elderly person’s reaction. Yogesh adds hesitatingly, “Money will never get in the way of my dream to play cricket at the highest level.”