Gully Cricket

While reading Yogesh's thought on gully cricket, many memories of it gathered in my mind. I was always a loser in field of cricket. I was lousy in catching. You can easily say I had butter fingers. Not good in batting and a chucker in bowling. I still recollect the joy in my heart when I first had caught Anup deep on a boundary. I had a uncanny habits of hitting slowest of fours in most difficult parts of ground. I could pull up a offside ball to score a boundary exactly behind the keeper. My memories of Interhouse cricket are also of a big loser. I participated in 2 most humiliating defeats of my house at school.

That's why I liked gully cricket. I was able to forget my image of a loser here. We used to play a game where you cannot hit above top and you will be given caught & bowl even if the ball is caught at first bounce. I used to bat for hours in such situation. So my friends introduced a upper limit for this game. I could also prove point or two in fielding. I had cover up my lousy fielding by showing what I had. I had a lot courage, so I used to stand very near to batsman, fearless about what can happen. So anything which could fit in my hand or I caught was a bonus. Beside it used to play on the batsman's mind that he did not wanted to hit a fellow player.

You see for my own sake, I liked it.