India won the T20 World Cup on March 8 in Ahmedabad. The Narendra Modi Stadium was full, the celebrations went late into the night and by the early hours of March 9 the players were figuring out how to get home. Most of them waited for flights or team arrangements. Shivam Dube booked a 3rd AC train ticket on the Sayaji Express departing at 5.10 AM and spent the next eight hours hiding under a brown Indian Railways blanket on the top berth trying not to get recognised. He had just scored 26 off 8 balls in the final over of a World Cup final. Nobody on the train knew that.
How Shivam Dube ended up on the Sayaji Express at 5 in the morning
The reason for the train was straightforward. Flights from Ahmedabad to Mumbai were completely sold out after the final. Thousands of fans had descended on the city and every seat on every flight was gone. Dube did not want to wait.
Shivam Dube has a four-year-old son Ayaan and a two-year-old daughter Mehwish at home in Mumbai and he wanted to get back to them as quickly as possible. A road trip through post-match traffic was not going to work. The only option was the 5.10 AM train and the only tickets left were in 3rd AC. He booked three tickets for himself, his wife Anjum and a friend and started thinking about how to get on the train without being mobbed by an entire city still wearing India jerseys and singing in the streets.
The disguise was thorough. Full sleeve T-shirt, a cap and a face mask. He sat in the car and waited until five minutes before departure before moving. "I told my wife that I will wait in the car till five minutes before the train's departure. After that, I will rush to board the train," he told the Indian Express. He got on, climbed straight to the top berth and stayed there. At one point during the night he came down to use the washroom and walked the length of the carriage without anyone recognising him. The disguise was holding.
Then the ticket collector arrived. He looked at the ticket. Shivam Dube. He looked up. "Shivam Dube? Who is that, the cricketer?" Anjum did not miss a beat. "No no, why would he be here?" The TC moved on. The world champion pulled the blanket back over his head and went back to sleep on the top berth.
The police were waiting at the airport and Dube was at a train station
The night part of the journey was manageable. Broad daylight at Borivali station in Mumbai was a different problem. "I was worried about getting down at Borivali in broad daylight. I couldn't have escaped attention there," Shivam Dube said. He called the Mumbai Police for help. The police had been expecting him to land at the airport like every other player. When he told them he was arriving at a train station on a 3rd AC ticket they were genuinely confused. "They thought I was landing at the airport but were surprised when I told them that I was travelling by train. I was provided a police escort so things were easy and the exit was smooth," he said.
Shivam Dube got home to Ayaan and Mehwish that morning. A few hours earlier he had been standing in the middle of the Narendra Modi Stadium with a World Cup winners medal around his neck. By the time Mumbai woke up he was already back in Borivali having traveled third class with a blanket over his face. Shivam Dube finished the tournament with 235 runs at a strike rate of 169 and is heading into IPL 2026 with CSK as one of the most in-form middle order batters in the country. The story of the train has made him more popular than any of those numbers could have on their own. In a sport full of chartered flights and five star hotels a World Cup winner choosing a 3rd AC berth to get home to his kids is the kind of thing people do not forget easily.
