Tujhjyakade stumps aahet ka re?

Watching gully cricket in Ambarnath is a wonderful experience. I am not really sports-friendly and I mean this in a gentlemanly sort of way. I don’t hate sports or cricket for that matter. It’s just that my ideas of fun are books, movies and the like. I am the kind of person who would rather wait for the football to come to him and then kick it than run after it in a huddle of other sweaty males.
Thanks to an evening work plan that got cancelled, I got to visit an old friend of mine who was recuperating from a serious leg injury. Now this friend of mine is a die-hard cricket fan, so even as the doctor advised him complete rest and a routine exercise regime to get his leg back in shape, this guy goes to play cricket. Well, he has a runner to run for him. So all he has to do is stand like a batsman and hit the ball when it comes to him and the runner will run. Fair enough. It’s doable for an injured batsman. There were more amusing moments in the game session that I saw which I will now delve into.
Gully cricket here is a funny affair. Funny because all you need are a bat and a ball. Of course there will be a batsman and another guy who needs to stand near the bowler who will switch sides with the batsman when they have taken a run or when the over is over, if you get what I mean. (Look, this is exactly why I said I am not into sports, so you could spare me the agony of those ‘Why can’t you use proper cricketing jargon’ looks.) The funny part here is that, the guy on the other side won’t have a bat, because like I said there’s only one bat. So the other guy has a stick in hand broken from the branch that hung lowest that evening.
Then there are the spots that are ‘declared’. My acute observation tells me that if the ball that you hit goes into these declared zones, you get a number of runs that has been pre-stipulated. For example, if your ball goes into the 2D zone, he gets 2 runs and 1d begets one run, of course! Hit me on my head if I even think of animation. These regions are mostly chosen because of their inaccessibility. Like today, the D zones were the insides of a scarcely used-but-filled-with-slimy water- swimming pool- a place that a fielder can’t jump to catch a ball or anything for that matter. The ball that goes into such zones usually comes out looking a bit different. Suppose it went into a thorny thicket, it would have scratches. If a red ball went into a slightly wet swimming pool with blue-green water, it will come out as a wet red ball.
There is a serious dearth of umpires on the field. Imagine a cricket scene that has no umpires. The players have to undergo the rigorous task of decision-making even while they are concentrating on the barrage of obscene words from the other side. The first batsman to lose his wickets makes all the players in the gully happy because he is the new umpire who is expected to suddenly turn objective and give unbiased decisions and not to make your team win even if you can.
Gully cricket is gully cricket because it is played in the gully. So obviously there are no selectors. The players just select themselves and count themselves in. Halfway through the game, one can expect a switch of loyalty and one can’t point anything at him – anyone would want to join a winning team, after all. Each time would have an equal number of players, strictly. If team A has 6 members, team B needs to have 6 members too, not less, not more.
Rules exist in the unwritten, unspoken and seldom-mentioned bye-laws of gully cricket for a stray extra member. In regular cases as such, the stray extra member could either bat for both the teams or one member from the team with one member less can bat twice, but only after everyone else gets a chance to bat. The stray extra also needs to field (run after balls with the idea to get hold of it and to throw it on time onto either of the stumps that is convenient.) twice. Fielding twice is just too much effort, which is a good reason not to be late for the match.
The bye-law also restricts players from using their mobile-phones during the match. The match often requires to be cut short for bad light because the bowler got a phone call to which he replied something akin to “Arre me khaali aahot, kheltoy (pause to hear the other side)…kay? (Something interesting!) Aalo thaamb.” Then the bowler bowls the ball and the batsman hits it towards the fielder who has right then yelled that he was not ready because he got an important call. No points to guess the caller from the leering smile on the fielder’s face.
The lack of space and growth in the number of glass panes that have popped up in recent times, simpler methods of getting out have been invented. One of them is one-tappa or ek-tappi. You have been caught out if the ball that you hit bounces once on the ground and lands in the hands of the fielder. In such a case, the fielder will also throw the ball back in the air with his hands up in the air in mock joy/ amok with joy.
There can be as many matches in a day as you wish. There can be 10-over matches, 5-over matches, 2-over matches and single-over matches. The evening play session is started with a match with the biggest number of overs. The number of overs is cut down as the sun begins to set. So while the sun is almost kissing the horizon, our teams are battling it out in a one-over test match, complete with two angry fielders who yelled at each other for no reason and a guy who tried to catch a ball between his chest and chin.

Too dark to play, the players say goodnight to each other and skittle off home- back to MBA study books an engineering assignments after an enriching evening game.