Gully cricket is dead, and so are its quaint rituals

The alley game once demanded a special devotion; it wasn't just for recreation. Today, its devotees are gone, replaced by ambitious young players who think the game restricts their playing style

Despite how frequent cricket tournaments are these days —five World Cups, yearly IPLs, the Champions Trophies, and the Asia Cups — I have lately been missing the immediacy and intimacy I once felt with the game. A trip to the balcony presents a clear reason: Gully cricket is dead.

For many in my generation and before, the alley game was never an evening’s “light recreation.” It demanded a special devotion.

A wall was carefully chosen, as was the stone to draw wickets on it. Team compositions were passionately negotiated. There were special rules too: Only grounded shots, no leg before wicket or LBW dismissals, and the classic one-tip-one-hand catches. The solitary tennis ball was religiously guarded. Most days we had that one cloth-beater/bat that became the sole key to our salvation, converting twos to boundaries at will.

And on days the boys donned their blues for a World-Cup hunt, it was nothing less than a ritual. The expensive faux-MRF-stickered blade would be brought out for the finals and semi-finals, or when India played Pakistan. A few even donned jerseys with “Tindalkar” or “Rahul Ganguli” scribbled on them.

I remember, there was a tea stall with a tiny bubble TV nearby, complete with an extendable antenna, and we would pause our game from time to time to catch the score there or see an important replay. Seeing us huddled around it one would realise that gully games were no less than sacred pyres; they generated mana for our heroes engaged in battles at the Oval or the Lords.

Or so we believed. This quaint charm of mohalla cricket is fast fading, though. With the IPL’s immense financial success, the game is a profession now, a trade. And trades have secrets, to be learned in specialised classes and fiercely guarded. While India’s cricketing legends like Sachin Tendulkar or Kapil Dev might swear by the gully game’s role in their professional careers, Uday Mishra — my fourteen-year-old next-door neighbour — has been advised by his coach to not ruin his technique “playing with amateurs.”

Uday’s parents spent close to Rs 7,000 on a cricket kit last year. An additional Rs 12,000 goes towards his monthly fees for the cricket academy. They say his game has improved. He was recently selected for his school team. His last under-16 trials didn’t go that well though, and he’s working hard to make it this time. For recreation, Uday plays “soccer” — FIFA ‘22 on his Play Station 5.

Even in the gully, football seems to be upstaging cricket. On the rare occasions Uday graces the neighbourhood park, he takes to football too. Coaches often advise budding players to engage in recreational football. Vijay Khera (name changed), a sports teacher in a nearby school, believes the beautiful game is physically a much more demanding sport and helps keep the players agile.

But gully cricket, he tells me, restricts their playing style. “Let’s say you have a very short boundary on your off-side — a wall, someone’s windows, parked cars. Players will either keep hitting on the on-side and try snatching runs or keep playing toward the off-side because it’s easier to score boundaries there. Either way, they fail to expand their shot selection.”

It’s true that spaces are truly getting restrictive. The alleys are lined end to end with massive SUVs, and resident welfare associations would rather have manicured well-maintained grassy parks for joggers and walkers, than dusty maidans for kids to play. The few large maidans that do persist, are mostly colonised in bits by coaching classes and their practice sessions. Or worse, transformed into informal car parks and garbage dumps.

Urmi Singh, a former zonal-level under-16 cricketer and now a working mother, has another reason. “We played in the gully because, for our parents, cricket was a recreational activity, and the child was ultimately supposed to pursue a career in more “serious professions.” Gully cricket was an escape, the only way to exercise one’s love for the sport as well as get better at it,” she says.

Ms Singh sends both her son and daughter to cricket academies so they may pursue serious careers in cricket. The brochures she has collected from various academies in the area are identical to ads for IAS and engineering coaching centres — full of promises and glowing testimonies.

There’s a multitude of such cricket coaching classes these days, at least in metropolitan hubs like Delhi and Mumbai. Each offers its own formulae to crack the selection code and earn big bucks in the IPL. They have scouts hunting for future talents in schools and colleges. Both of Ms Singh’s children were scouted at their school. Several of the high-end academies also offer health and diet counsellors, adding to the financial investment from parents and time investment for students.

With stakes high on both ends, who has time to hold quaint rituals every evening in obeisance to their cricketing heroes?