Chronicles of a Demented Mind

When watching the cricket match last night, after hearing some of the new terms in T20 like free hit, I was just thinking of days in my childhood when we used to play gully cricket and the various terms that kids had coined and used while playing. Although some of them might have been in the rule books, we (at least I) have never seen these terms and rules being used or being implemented in an international match… Just thought I’d list out some of them…

First, some terms…

• Fresh Over: This would occur if a bowler bowled a string of 5 wides. The bowler forfeits the right to that over and a new bowler is called in. Although, all the runs scored in the ‘fresh over’ would still be retained by the batting team
• Current Out: This was classic gully cricket term where we didn’t have stumps and had to make do with stones, bricks or in some cases shoes to replace the stumps. According to this rule, if a fielder is trying to get a batsman run out and he has one foot on the ’stump’ when he catches the ball, then the batsman can be run out if he’s caught out of the crease
• Boundary Match: This happened when the space available to play cricket was very small. A line or an imaginary line would constitute a small boundary within which the game is played. If the ball crossed the boundary on full toss, the batsman was declared out
• Tip n Run: We used to play this game when the number of players were low. The rule was that if a batsman touched the ball, he had to run to the other end. Something like baseball… rest of the rules remained the same
• Single side boundary: Again, played if there’re very few players. The runs could be scored only on one side of the batsman, which would be decided by the captains at the beginning

Now, for some rules…

• In a match, the umpire would always be from the batting team
• Batsmen switched sides at the end of the over and not the bowler and the keeper
• If a fielder was sitting at the time that the ball was bowled, the ball was declared a no-ball
• If a batsman was injured, the runner was always a batsman who’d already gotten out
• If the stumps were drawn on the wall, it was mandatory to get the ball wet so that we could see the mark on the wall in case it hit the ’stumps’
• The marker for a wide would always be a bat-length… irrespective of how long or short the bat was