Straight out of the gulli

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This cricket season has been longing for action for some time now. Two test matches between India and New Zealand have already been played and both ending in a draw leaves the Bangalore test match to be the decider. Even on the fifth day of the Hyderabad match, my father was hopeful that if India got New Zealand all out before

lunch, we could still win it. Any cricket match going on in the world will have parallel league matches being played at the same time on the streets. These games look to channel the energies of the stadium, emulating the Greats of the game. I have been told that cricket is a funny game. It is indeed.
Everyone who has played cricket has started on the streets or more often in the balconies of their homes. Long narrow lanes with houses on either sides of the street was the pitch, two large stones for wickets and an old worn out tennis ball. There would always be a fight over best players. The bats were for the most part as heavy as our own weight and we’d drag it all around scraping the edges. The first 15 minutes were spent cautiously to ensure the neighbours did not mind us playing. But soon the ball would be tossed high in the air and then one of us would scream, “Abe pakkad! Soni Auntie ke balcony me gira toh ball nahin milega!”
Of course, the ball would squarely land in Soni Auntie’s balcony and then there would be a quiet battle in front of her door as to whose turn it was to ask her for the ball. We would magically arrange ourselves in such a way that the same person ended up asking Auntie for the ball as he did the last time, and all the times before that.
Deepak Sridhar, currently a student at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio shares, “My memories of cricket were playing in the parks and small grounds, bet matches for five rupees and then stopping at a borewell after games for filling my stomach with water. Raw bats shaped out a plank and then cut, was my first cricket bat. It was fun to the core. I used to come back from school and rush to the field in my hawai chappal. The sooner you got to the field, the better, it was, because you want to be the first one there when they make the teams.”
For a country that glorifies cricket and treats players like gods, street cricket is an integral part of the game. Children here learn to bat like Tendulkar, bowl like Wasim Akram, keep like Gilchrist and field like Rhodes. “Well, that is where most of the cricketers kick started their careers,” says Ashish Honnavar, Tech Support Coach at Dell. “It is a complete sense of freedom and joy. A tree can be your wicket, a dead end on the road your boundary, parents and neighbours your spectators and the stray dogs and vegetable vendors — the pitch invasion; and you don’t even need the whole bunch of 22, you can play with three a side,” he adds.
It is this freedom that lures everyone. Its unpredictability is irresistible. You’ll know when you see the expression of a fellow spectator when you’re seated in a stadium and you are watching a bowler taking his run towards the crease. From that distance you can only guess which way the ball will swing and which way the bat.
Cricket is not just a gentlemen’s game, it’s a game for the children in us, for that little bit of thrill and excitement, for the endless hours of running under the hot sun chasing the ball — it is for everyone who just simply loves to play.