A Gully Cricket Game with 3 Super Overs!

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After the exciting and unfortunate loss of India against New Zealand at the World Cup, the whole country was frustrated. I used to watch lot of cricket when I was a kid, but gave up as I was going through my teenage. But this 2019 World Cup, I had lot of spare time on hand and hence decided to watch our boys race for the trophy. I used to play lot of cricket in my teenage, even after giving up watching it, the urge to play never sank. I used to represent a club in my childhood days and my college team too, so I was into cricket like every other Indian kid. Though basketball is my go to sport now, I love playing other sports too. But after 12th, when I shifted to Goa, I hardly had played any cricket. Since I was in my hometown and it were my holidays, I was exuberant to play cricket.

I feel lucky that I still catch up with my school friends and they still are part of my inner circle. Even though we pursue different streams and dreams, we still find time to meet each other. On a typical Saturday night, two of my friends and me hosted our super late birthday party. The discussion after the dinner obviously involved cricket. So we decided to play cricket next day recalling the times when we used to play daily after our 10th board exam holidays.

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Luckily my school boys turned up at the closest ground on a Sunday morning(The World Cup Final Match Day). Some lethargic sleepy humans did ditch us, but we had predicted it beforehand. We had 3 beautiful games of cricket and the last match was super exciting. Since we were less in numbers, the batting side had to give an extra player to the fielding side. We batted first and failed to put a high score for target. However the batsman we expected the least from did chip in some important runs. We set a target of 28 runs. After being bashed for bad bowling, our team was on a losing toll. The fielder we borrowed intentionally or unintentionally dropped couple of catches of their main batsman but fortunately caught the third one. They had to make just 1 run with 3 wickets in hand and had plenty of overs left. Aryan took 1 wicket in his over. But believe it or not, our bowler Chinmay surprised us all. He took both the batsmen down on ducks with wonderful yorkers and that lead us to the super over. Since we were bowling first, we were thrashed by their talented opening batsmen for 12 runs. Our bowler Aditya held them low at start but a square leg SIX slipped the game from our hands. Our batting openers failed, and we managed to make just 1 run of 3 balls of Ankit’s over. We had to make 11 runs to win of just 3 balls. Chinmay wasn’t able to time the balls and missed the 4th ball too. We somehow had to get Chinmay off the ground, and let me try the gamble. We retired Chinmay claiming he had a cramp (but he didn’t) and I stepped in (Gully can accept a bit of dirty game). The bowling side protested at first, but later on accepted feeling confident on their easy win. I received a full length ball on the shorter side and whacked it straight for a SIX! We now had 5 runs to make, and it had to be a boundary. I received another full length delivery and stroked it towards the long off for a boundary. But it was a FOUR! So that meant, it was a tie, but this is Gully Cricket. So we decided to have another super over.

We batted first. Aryan and I opened for us but I got run out in a hasty decision. But Aryan was holding out our front strong and managed to get 15 runs. Aditya took the ball in his hand and carefully set the field. But Jayesh and Meghraj brought the game to their court with just needing 5 runs in 1 ball. And guess what, Meghraj smashed a FOUR.Yes, this happened!

This time we decided to hand over the ball to Aryan considering his excellent ability to suffocate the batsman. He gave just 8 runs of his over. Aryan and I opened but early wicket of Aryan who took strike was a concern. We descended later on and messed up an easy wind. We managed to score only 3 runs of an excellent over by Chadda. He bowled at the right spots and with the right intention. THEY WON THE GAME!

Though we lost, it was a game all of us would remember for lifetime. Cricket won that day, mutual respect and appreciation was shared.

Co-incidently the World Cup Final took place on that night which tied and lead to a super over. The super over was also tied and England was given the World Cup based on boundaries. The prestigious cup was given to the country who invented the game for the first time. But I feel this theory of announcing the winner based on boundaries is baseless and partial. The game from its origin has drifted towards being unfair to a large scale towards bowlers. Powerplays, shorter boundaries, lesser overs etc are all batsman oriented recent changes made for business side of the game. And it’s not only in international cricket, in India we have this half-pitch bowling practice where the bowler is not allowed to take a run up and has to ball standing beside the stumps directly. I certainly don’t get this ideology. I understand that sometimes there’s very little space and you have to shorten the pitch but I have seen people playing half-pitch bowling in huge grounds. If you are giving batsman 80% wide boundary to score in a normal gully game, why the bowler has to compromise so much. The most used ball in gully games is the tennis ball, which I feel is an added advantage to batsmen compared to the leather ball. So the game is already unfair. Plus there are no LBW’s considered in gully games. Most of the times there’s no wicketkeeper kept, and hence edges or stumpings are ruled out.

India is one of the best performing country in the game of cricket. We hold the best bowling side right now and the best bowler (Jasprit Bumrah). Imagine if we make these small changes in attitude towards bowling in international cricket as well as in gully cricket. I believe we’ll produce even more better bowlers.

Cricket lives in every Indian’s blood. Though England invented it, it is as much ours as it can get. Let’s bring the change! #forthebowlers

Image Credits : School photo created by rawpixel.com – www.freepik.com (Gully Cricket), Janak Malkar (selfie), Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels (Still Life), Graphic by Praveen Raj (India symbol)