5 reasons why gully cricket is so popular in India

#3 The no-ball rule

The umpire is a figure of much hatred from the bowling team in gully cricket

One of the strangest rules that gully cricket has is that the umpire can declare a no-ball if he believes that the ball has been delivered at a considerable pace. Now, it's not difficult to imagine that a rule that does not explain how fast the pace of the delivery has to be for it to be a no-ball leaves much room for ambiguity.

Since the umpire in gully cricket is always from the batting team - sometimes a batsman who just gets out immediately takes up his position as an umpire - he makes decisions almost blatantly in the favour of the batsmen.

So, every time a batsman gets out, he will give the umpire that fiery, accusatory glance and almost compel him to declare that the pace of the delivery was too much for it to be considered legitimate. If the umpire doesn't make a decision in the favour of the batting team, then after the match, basically all hellfire breaks loose.