Gully Cricket. Cricket in our Backyards
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Little Monks play cricket outside the Matho monastery in Ladakh,
(click on photos to go to gallery)
I am what you’d call the `cricket philistine’. I know zilch about cricket. Long time ago when I was a rookie journalist I knew even less. But my boss in her wisdom sent me to get quotes of Indian Cricketers after a great cricketing win overseas. Of course I don’t remember what win. I went and stood sheepishly at the Delhi International Airport along with the knowledgeable sports journos who had come to do the same. After an hour of waiting the cricketers emerged. I recognized no one. Unfortunately for me none of them were wearing their familiar blue uniform. I could not make out one from the other or them from the other travellers . One of them was Saurabh Ganguli as I learnt later in office after a whiplashing from the boss.
The second time I was sent to get a quote from Sachin Tendulkar himself. I recognized him of course. I had seen him in enough ads thank god. It was almost five in the morning when Sachin emerged from the exit gate looking sleep deprived but willingly signing autographs. I accosted him and asked him some questions. Don’t’ know what they were. I had just mugged them up after getting them dictated to me by my colleague. I wrote down his answers as he left with his wife who had come to pick him up.
It is not all austerity and holy verses in this madrasa in Bhopal. Boys here also love a good game of cricket
In the boarding school I went to in Himachal Pradesh, we had different sports for different seasons. April was the cruelest month, it being the cricket season. I hated cricket and dreaded the cricket practice where our seniors hurled cricket balls with all their might at us, hurting our fingers and palms. I dreaded the ball at the crease too and was more hit at by the ball than me hitting it.
I grew up with a general disdain soccer fanatics have for cricket and I still seldom watch a match to the full unless its the India verus Pakistan match or the clash in the finals. Both matches I thoroughly enjoyed at the recent 2011 ICC World cup.
Ignorant or indifferent that I may be about India’s biggest religion, I am not however unaware about the passion it holds for the rest of the country. I don’t know any other occasion in India when people young and old spontaneously emerge from their homes to sing and dance in the dead of night. The recent World cup win demonstrated that.
- Taj Mahal makes for a great backdrop. The camel owners that roam the Yamuna banks know it and will not come between you and the monument unless you pay them. I however found these boys playing cricket more interesting.
And the cricketers are Gods themselves. Before the World Cup 2011, I did a magazine shoot with the young cricketer Virat Kohli at his home in New Delhi. I wrote a post about it : –Virat Kohli in his Den. It has generated so much traffic from young girls around the country that I am baffled. Most of them profess their profound love for him and find him handsome, cool, sweet and loving. Majority of them want to meet him “at least once’’. I get calls on a daily basis from them begging me to give them his number or address. Most of the comments on the post are on the lines of the following comment a young girl from Shillong left.
“Heyyyyyy Sanjay ……plzzzzzzzz somehow meet him again n plzzzzz try to send some msgs from my side as I already two times texted in ur blog. Sanjay u r sooo gud n thanks to u dat u have reploied my messages.. nywaz plzzzx when u ll meet him again try to convey a small msg to him dat,, I wanna do a friendship wit him. I stay in Shillong and its quite difficult for me to meet Virat. Sanjay may be because of your help, I’ll be able to meet him once in my life n can do a friendship with him… great job… keep it up !!!!!!’’
Some years ago a friend of mine was sent by her boss to shoot what he called “Gully Cricket’’ ie. cricket as it is played in the gullies of Delhi. I thought it was an odd assignment. However I went with her and discovered that you cannot drive a few kilometers in Delhi before stumbling upon someone playing cricket somewhere.
Cricket and Shivaji park are synonymous. This biggest park in Mumbai is packed with young cricketers hoping to emulate Sachin Tandulkar and Sunil Gavaskar both of whom fine tuned their style on these grounds.
Traveling around India I found the same. People were playing cricket everywhere. I found young boys play at the spacious backyard of St Peter’s Church in Kanyakumari as I saw them play in a small glade in Kinnaur. I saw fishermen’s children play on the sands of the Coromandal Coast as I saw scull-capped boys bat it out at a madrasa in Bhopal. I saw it played on the banks of the Yamuna with Taj Mahal in the background as I saw it played among the gravestones at a graveyard in Bangalore. I saw small monks bat it out outside their monastery in Ladakh as I saw schoolboys play it in the backyard of the Thanjavur Palace in Thanjavur. I saw boys play it in the swamps at Kumbakaunam as I saw grown men wait their turn at the Shivaji Stadium in Mumbai- the hallowed grounds from where the journey of most Indian cricketing stars began. Town or village, young or old everyone was playing cricket.
I shot these photographs from my travels across India.
Bats are hard to come by in the remote tribal regions of Himachal. But the boys will not let that come in the way of their enjoying the game. A boy here uses a dead branch of an apple tree to bat.