Street Kids and Underarm Cricket.

Last weekend while visiting one of my friends place I came across bunch of kids playing on the street. They belonged to the slum near the road and most of them seemed to be around six to eight years of age. These kids where so talented that I had to stop and watch them in amazement. There was this kiddo who was continuously kart-wheeling on the road. His entire body had turned into a wheel with his hands and legs doing the role of the spokes of the wheel. Then there where two other kids jumping from the side wall performing somersault in air before they could perfectly land on theirs legs. All this made me wonder why India has never had a good representation at gymnastic at international level? This was same as asking why a country of more than a billion population was not able to produce a decent football team of 11 players.

As I came out of my thoughts I realized that the kids had divided themselves into two groups and were now ready to play gully cricket. These kids had found new format of underarm cricket by mixing cricket and football. The bat was replaced by leg. The batsman (or the leg-men) kicked the ball thrown at him by the bowler. These kids had learnt to have fun with the limited resources they had.

I continued my walk but only to take myself back in time to sweet old childhood memories of underarm cricket. Underarm cricket is a fun form of cricket with no written rules. That is what makes it very interesting. The rules are usually formed depending on the number of players and the area you are playing in. Only strict compulsion is that bowling should be done under the arm which is opposite to the rule of standard cricket.

There are some common rules which prevail at most places though. Like scoring a sixer is considered out. This means there is no scope for budding talents who aspire being Yuraj and Sehwag in this game. Also reinforces the fact that there are no ‘chakkas’ allowed in this format of the game. To make things worse for the batsman if he scores a six and the ball goes too far he is made to get the ball himself. One more rule which make life difficult for batsman is ‘one-tup’ catch or one bounce catch. Batsman is declared out even if the fielder catches the ball after one bounce.

But it is not that most of the rules of underarm cricket are against the batsman. There are rules which support the batting side as well. Firstly the boundaries are very close, so scoring four runs is easy. If there are places in gully which are difficult to reach or say there are thorny bushes near the play area, those places are marked restricted. Which mean if the ball goes in those places, declared one run or two runs is given directly without batsman having to actually run. Also usually there is no batsman at non-striker end, if a batsman scores one run or three runs he has to walk back to the striker end to face the next ball. Incase there are less players, wicket keeper’s role is usually avoided from the game. In this case no runs are allowed if ball is hit behind the wicket.

Infrastructure required for this format of the game is cheap and easily available. Ball used is a rubber or tennis ball. So this small change gets rid of pads, helmet and center pad as well. Bats vary from proper wooden ones, ‘piddo’ (midriff of coconut leaf) or a bat created at home from piece of wood. Scooter or car tyre or a wall with three lines drawn on it makes the wicket at the striker end and a large stone or brick forms wicket at the bowling end. Since the stone is quite low in height many times concept of ‘current’ is used to get the batsman run out. According to this rule if the fielder touches his leg to the stone and catches the ball in his hands then it is considered as good as ball touching the stone.

Single innings of underarm cricket varies from five to ten overs. This extra short format of the game brings in few interesting strategies and feelings as well. Most kids want to be a batsman, so if the batsman on the crease is not getting out you’ll find your own team mates hoping you get out soon and they get to bat. Bowling side also plays clever, if they find that a batsman is not able to hit they’ll try not to get him out and waste overs with him. You’ll see catches being dropped on purpose. Setting the fielding is usually not a problem because of the small size of the playing area.

This underarm cricket is real fun to play. After writing all this I miss my childhood even more. Is anybody game to play it?