The changing face of India’s ‘domestic’ circuit

A lot happened in the media over the last week. Top of mind is the celebration of the silver jubilee of Kapil’s Devils  conquering of the cricketing world – the unmistakable glint in the eye of every cricket lover of old (or not so old!) is all too evident when this topic comes up for discussion.

A thought about the changing face of Indian cricket has been swarming my mind all along, which I have discussed with a few already but thought it needed penning down. The changing face of Indian cricket I am talking about is the ‘domestic’ circuit – not Ranji trophy or Deodhar trophy or Tendulkar trophy or Lara trophy - It’s street cricket or more affectionately, galli cricket that I am referring to.

First, things that havent changed about galli cricket – The same old unbiased team selection procedure - Hold a small stone in the hand; show it to both captains; do some magic with it and ask ‘in’ or ‘out’ and the captain who calls correctly gets the first pick at the talent pool standing in front of him/her (yes, ‘her’ also!!!) – Just before the game is underway, rules are quickly drafted (ICC should take a leaf out from here as to how quickly ineffective rules are chucked out and new rules brought in!) full toss into the house is out, if the ball hits the boulder on the other end of the street, it’s a declared two – Game underway, you have the full talent on display, 5 different bowling actions (some chuck, some intelligently bend their elbow before delivering the ball, some have a longish run up, some generate amazing power on the ball standing still) , 10 different batting styles and stance (some have a front on stance a la Chanderpaul, some lean onto the bat as if they are hanging on to dear life, some have a stylish checking- elbow-angle-with-ground-first stance) –The sight screen disturbance comes in the form of a car or bike that passes by, which inevitably leads to stoppage in play for those brief moments and disturbs the three carefully arranged stones that serve as stumps at the bowlers end. There is always a scorer on the bowling side who keeps asking the score at the end of each over and the batting side, more often than not, overstates the score by a run or two and then you have a nice action sequence with both sides carefully recounting how each ball was played and then a satisfied conclusion on the score arrived at – Finally, one team wins and then you have all kinds of accusations and explanations from the losing side – probably the adaptation of a post-match presentation

Now, what has perhaps really altered the flavour of galli cricket – Nobody talks Gavaskar or Tendulkar anymore, it is Dhoni all the way!!! You have all kinds of hair styles and colors out  - Some Dhonis, some Uthappas (yes,with the ‘ghazni- like’ hair style). I watched a player in a street match in Bangalore who was even mimicking Dhoni’s adjusting-all-guards-and-helmet-20times batting. Today’s galli cricketers are far more talented – they generate amazing bat speed and thwack the ball hard – at the same time, they suddenly seem to realize the importance of singles, so they drop their wrists on the ball,sense the opportunity of a quick single at the vacant short leg position and sprint and their partner (yes, these days a non-striker has become mandatory, unlike the old!!) responds. No one wants to play longish matches these days. I recount a tale of how my father and my uncles used to play a test match in their front yard over four days every evening (and how one of my uncles who scored 210 and 210 not out in consecutive matches was made a permanent wicket keeper after that!! – Even we, cousins, used to play test matches over 4 days with 30 overs bowled a day).

Perhaps a sign that galli cricket is changing – or perhaps a realization that it has always kept pace with modern day cricket as was the era in which it was played. There’s a new format of cricket that becomes popular at the international level and the ‘administrators’ of galli cricket quickly lap it up and it becomes the norm. These things always pass your attention- unless pictures thrown at you like the one above make you sit up and reflect...

Now Dhoni wants to draw inspiration from Kapil’s Eleven for the 2011 World Cup…