Who doesn't love gully cricket? School and college life is virtually incomplete without an evening match in the streets. With strange rules and regulations, gully cricket is excellent entertainment and an integral part of every Indian’s childhood.
Unlike professional cricket, rain cannot play spoilsport to gully cricket. In fact, it adds to the fun factor. With a wet ball and wet hands, your skills are tested to the core as the ball skids through the tarred road or cement slab.
But ever wondered if all your gully cricket skills would come into any use when playing mainstream cricket? If that fun evening, played with all seriousness, can add skills that many lack on the cricket pitch these days? If playing with a hard tennis ball, broken bat and bricks as stumps can make you a really good International cricketer? If that smart cutter delivery you bowled to your neighbour would hold you in good stead when playing for India?
The story of Pakistani legend Wasim Akram is an inspiration for every gully cricketer. The Pakistani was a virtually unknown cricketer who could not make it into his college team and only played club cricket. He attended Pakistan team selection trials at the Gaddafi Cricket Stadium and his performance was so good that it convinced then Pakistan skipper, Javed Miandad, to include him in the national team.
So all your core gully cricket skills can come to use even if you have hardly played any proper club cricket. Not that everyone can be a Wasim Akram or MS Dhoni, but there are some skills that only a gully cricketer would know, that even Akram and Dhoni would love to have up their sleeves.
Now let's look at all those wonderful skills a gully cricketer has, that can come in handy in International Cricket.
#1 Tip, call and run
Running between the wickets is a key skill in cricket. Just like boundary making abilities are important, the basic rotation of strike is as important a capability as any. When the pressure gets going in Test cricket, the first thing coaches tell you to do is try and rotate the strike.
With close-in fielders all around the bat, it requires a special ability to dab the ball with little power, call your partner well and clear, and go for that single.
In gully cricket, one does this countless times. In gully cricket, you have 5-6 close-in fielders, whom you must elude with your placement to get that single. Each run counts. Just playing the ball in the gap would not do but You need to call your partner and run as quick as a hare. Every one of those 5-6 fielders is going to pounce on that ball and look to shatter your bricks.
There is a skill you must not miss, that lies between the drop-and-run calling – you need to know your non-striker's speed and his alertness to the situation while running. Calling out loud and clear is another thing coaches tell you, day in, day out at cricket clubs.
So that is 3 skills you have but you never knew - playing with soft hands, calling out to your non-striker clearly, running as quick as possible.
#2 Playing the ball along the ground
Another coaching manual stuff is playing the ball along the ground in Tests and finding gaps. The lofted shot is always on, but with the red seaming cherry, you need to know to play the ball along the ground and pierce gaps.
In gully cricket, there is the unusual 'one-pitch-catch' rule you hated as a batsman. You drop the ball with soft hands only to see that the fielder has grabbed it on one-pitch and you have to surrender the bat to the next guy walking in. But this strange rule could actually help you in proper Test cricket. How?
To avoid that one-pitch-catch you are bound to play the ball as low to the ground as possible and you also need to pick the gap.
With so many fielders all around the bat, it takes a special skill to hang around with the bat for long. The skilled street cricket bowlers try every which way to make you play in the air so that you gift a one-pitch-catch.
Even a ball that bounces shoulder high is negotiated safely by a gully cricketer, as he dabs the ball close to the ground out of reach of any close-in fielder.
That is another skill you did not know you possess.
#3 Saqlain Mushtaq off breaks
Yes, it is not only the batsmen who get to benefit from gully cricket. The bowlers benefit too. How many times have you watched an off break bowler like Saqlain Mushtaq or Harbhajan Singh and practised bowling those offies?
The gripping off breaks and sharp leg breaks mixed with the straight ball, are something you use in your daily life in gully cricket. Off breaks turn a mile and the doosra and googly bamboozle the batsmen. Gully cricketers practice the whole day with different grips on the ball to get your doosra and googly right.
Another unwritten and interesting rule in gully cricket states that a batsman who fails to get bat on ball three balls in a row is ruled out. With the kind of skills a gully cricket batsman possesses, it takes special skills to make him miss thrice in a row.
That is where those bag of tricks with the ball come into play and the uneven surface helps one to get the batsman out.
Ravichandran Ashwin had ample practice with the carrom ball in the streets before he bowled the magnificent ball to Hashim Amla in the WorldT20 in 2014.
#4 The consistency in yorkers
Given the number of times a gully cricketer hits the base of the bricks while bowling, it is a walk in the park for him to bowl yorkers on a consistent basis. With much time spent in playing in the streets, where the bowler aims to shatter the defences of the batsman, the yorker is in most gully cricketer's bag of tricks.
If Malinga can bowl six yorkers in an over, the average gully cricketer can bowl it many more times and hit the same spot innumerable times. He knows that missing the spot can see the ball land way outside the park.
Malinga, who grew up in a coastal village situated in Galle, often played cricket with friends on the sand banks and by the coconut grooves near a river in his village. He groomed his ability to land yorkers perfectly with his slinging action.
Malinga’s talent to bowl yorkers was honed as a young boy while playing gully cricket.
#5 Aim as good as an archer and hands as safe as a zipped pouch
We have all seen Jonty Rhodes in international cricket and there are a number of Jonty's in every street in India. With just two bricks to aim at most of the time, gully cricket is the first training pitch for future fielding greats.
Since the distance between stumps is shorter, batsmen run in the blink of an eye but the fielders are equally equipped, and more often than not, the ball hits the stumps.
Fielders are brave, have good hands and rarely drop any catch. Fielding is the most important department in these games, as they should be always ready to pounce on that run out chance or take a one-pitch-catch diving in front.
Close-in fielders also become fearless and these gully cricket fielders could go on to become terrific short leg fielders in international cricket due to their ability to remain alert at all times!.
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