Gully Boys’ National Game
It all starts with your father sitting in front of the televison to watch India play against some nation, aghh.. There goes your cartoon, but your father convinces you to watch the match along with him. As the game progresses, you’re more hyped by the running commentary given by Ravi Shastri and Harsha Bhogle, and then there comes that satisfying sound “TOK” smashed, with a classic stroke, by the Master Blaster, jersey number 10 with his MRF bat, off goes the ball flying to the boundary.
Later you wander off into the streets, and right in between the road you see some random rocks erected and a group all much elder to you, most of them in high school, while you’re still in elementary, are busy forming a team, they or in odd numbers to form a perfect team, they see you, just like that you little fellow is picked up into their team to fill the odd gap. And after all the wickets have fallen down your given the bat to enter the crease with a default by runner, ’cause they don’t trust your tiny legs.
Now you get all the cheer and motivation in the world while the guy in the opposite end prepares to bowl underarm, it’s an easy ball, and you loft it off to the boundary with a fluke shot, the only reason it went to four so easily was that every other fielder had decided to stand really close, and now everybody starts trolling the bowler for getting scored by a kid.
And the next thing you know, you’re out with your Pops shopping for that bat, the one that isn’t oversized for you, because you won’t just be playing with elders anymore, you gather your friends from neighboring blocks, you have found empty land in between the houses in your own Neighborhood, call that your home ground.
As you grow up, you learn that this sport “Cricket” is played in every nook and cranny of the country, a game we love to play all day long, a sport we celebrate like it’s a festival when especially when India defeats Pakistan.
From huge grounds to the small hall in your home, the places you learn to play cricket, with slightly different rules for every place, you come up with yourself. When it is home or teeny-weeny grounds it’s one tup catches and you hit the wall directly “How’s That?’.
To make it more fun we would totally ignore the boundaries, so the only way to score is by touching the ball with your bat, oh, that’s easy you might think, not really, the fielders are placed really close to you waiting for the one tup catch, and now maybe you think of hitting the ball really hard to scare off the players, oh boy, there’s a wall right beside, dare you to take a smack.
With the huge grounds, we most likely end up playing on only one side, either Off or leg side, because there are like ten other groups playing on the very same ground. Sometimes it would almost lead to a fight, but we cool it off and continue to play our own games, and later you’d have to return home without your nicest bat, it goes missing you know.
The entire world might and sit watch football, but here in India, it’s a whole another world, it’s all “cricket cricket” we are all emotionally connected to this sport. You know how shocked we were to learn that it wasn’t the cricket that’s our national game, but it don’t matter ’cause for us gully boys’ cricket is it.
