The Joy of Galli cricket...

Precautionary note: This post might contain liberal sprinkling of cricketing terminologies, intentionally and not so …

The joy is unravelled…

First the definition… ‘Galli cricket’ (street cricket, in literal translation) is the cricket game (or its closely resembling variants), played in a confined place (much smaller than a cricket ground) with rules applicable to the place and surroundings, the skill level of players, the kind of instruments used (it could be something resembling the bat, ball, stumps, bails, pads or the actual ones themselves!) and finally the collective knowledge of people involved! Let me detail the game further..

Place is the first parameter that is gonna set rules of the game. It could be played anywhere – in front of your house, street, busy road amidst traffic (come to india, I’ll show you how), in your school/college lobby, hostel room etc etc. If you are gonna play in a street corner, the rule could be something like “if the ball directly goes into the compound-wall of any of the surrounding houses, the batsman is out”. If you are gonna play in a narrow confined place (say 10 ft by 5 ft), the rule could be one-tip-out. “one-tip-out” is basically the batsman is out even if the fielder fields/catches the ball after one-bounce (it could be on floor or wall or surroundings like tree or a passing victim, by-stander, pedestrian, dog, cat and the likes). In one-tip-rule, there could be add-on (aka plug-in) rules like, one-tip-one-hand, which means the one-tip catch has to be taken in one-hand while a direct catch could be with both hands. There might be innovative rules, again based on the place.. If straight across the pitch, there is a house, the rule could be “If the ball directly lands in the house and returns back to the playing area without making any material or human damages (the former being more important than the latter), it would be declared a ‘sixer’”. On the other hand, if it damages material, say window pane, bulbs, tube-lights etc, then the incumbant batsman, who played that master shot would bear the consequences and declared out! (In some places, he could be let off with just the ‘out’ and a warning against further damages).. The place and hence the space available also many-a-times determine whether it is going to be a full-arm action, full-arm throw or even under-arm game…

Next thing is the skill level of players… This would mostly be the question of, “can a decent set of players rotate their arms and do a full bowling action?”. If yes, then the players would be equally divided and the game is all set. Else, chucking would be allowed in its various forms. In some places, the speed of chucking (throw) would be a bottleneck. Fast throws may not be allowed. The batsman can make a protest (most of the times on being out to a good ball) against speed-chucking. The art of ‘human-speedometering’ is something to be perfected over number of times of playing. Depending on the support received for such protests, the batsman can be given a reprieve… The collective skill level of players involved could also determine things like lbw (leg-before-wicket) rules, no-ball rules, wide, run-outs etc.

The instruments used…Many a places, the stumps would be drawn on wall (which means the wicket-keeping, slipping and third-manning is done by the wall itself!) using charcoal or it could be a pile of big blocks of stones or it could be three sticks grounded (the diameter of sticks could vary drastically with the base-criterion being that it should be visible to naked human eyes). The bat could be something bat-shaped (not the animal as per the wide understanding of the game).. It could be the exam-writing-pad to the coconut-leaf back-bone to a proper willow… The ball could be again something ball shaped ;) The material could be rubber, cork or even stone ( and yes, they use leather-cricket balls in posh gallis)…

Other than the aspects of the game which themselves makes it interesting, the best part of ‘Galli cricket’ is the fights involved. Galli cricket cannot be complete without a good dosage of fights… Opposite teams normally behave like india-pakistan at war. The fights could be between a player and the umpire (normally of the batting team), player and an opponent, player and set of opponents, player and the opposite team, team vs team and sometimes within the team! The fight could be on the half-baked knowledge of rules, on chucking when it is not allowed, on chucking against the set-chucking-norms, ball bouncing off the arms and going to the fielder and not the bat and sometimes on things like “did the stump fall off due to the ball or the bat hitting the stumps or due to the wind?”. The fighting would obviously mean taking the stumps in hand as weapon, using the bat to hit-out and yes, throwing the ball at one’s balls… You can see lots of inner—nested-looping of games within cricket when the fight starts.. Games like running and catching, throw-ball, WWF wresting, high-jump (to cross the compound-walls to run towards shelters of safetly), kabbadi (another popular indian game) etc could be exercised to make the fight wholesome. The resolution of such fights would defy any six-sensed human-beings common sense… The fights would end in some time (ranging between 2 mins to 30 mins normally), with very weird settlements. Sometimes, the fight would’ve originated contesting a caught-behind decision of mr.x by mr.y, the settlement might be barring mr.z from future games played in that community. It is all in the galli cricket.

Overall, to formalise the joys, Galli cricket brings back the ancestoral qualities of every human being and since it is good to preserve the values and a must to remember one’s roots, it is very essential that every eligible (no-bar) homo sapien should start playing the galli cricket. Like a cherry-topping, the reward of playing the game could be flattering the galli gals (who would be observing the game invariably from the windows of their respective homes) with the gentlemanly demeanors exhibited in the sport…