The story of Senior Inspector Subhash Shinde, a farmer’s son from Ratnagiri who arrived in Mumbai with the dream of becoming a fast bowler, is set to find new life in Bollywood, as his daughter’s book Safed Khaki prepares for a feature-film adaptation.

Shinde, now 56 and heading the Bandra Traffic Division, spent more than four decades in the Maharashtra Police, much of it in the Crime Branch. But long before the khaki uniform defined him, cricket did. For a brief period in his youth, he trained in the 1990-established Bombay Cricket Association-Mafatlal Bowling Scheme, where Mumbai cricket wellwisher Dr Makarand Waingankar was chief coordinator. Under the watchful eyes of English fast-bowling great Frank Tyson, the scheme produced a generation of Indian talent— Abey Kuruvilla, Paras Mhambrey, Sairaj Bahutule, Salil Ankola and Nilesh Kulkarni among them.