Owais Mughal
I grew up playing cricket on the street. After asr (late afternoon) prayers, I was usually the first one to put wicket in the center of the street, mark creases with a chalk, and put a stone as the bowling mark. I also used to put new tape on balls and did some other management stuff…
(Photo to the right is of a street cricket player from Chitral, Pakistan.)
…Slowly other boys from the neighbor hood would come out and numbering was done to decide who would bat first. In those early minutes of set up, a boy from the neighborhood helped me a lot. He was employed in one of the homes and used to get a permanently bald cut from the local barber. So people started calling him ‘ganja’. Some with lesser formal education used to call him ‘takloo’ (it means a bald person in local Karachi slang)
After a Hajj season our cricket team suddenly got some Haji players who had recently became ‘ganja’ (bald) after performing the holy ritual.
This caused a big confusion in our local team on how to distinguish between so many bald players while using some kind of slang language. In those days of early youth, using proper literary language was considered so out of fashion……
The above photo is from Dawn newspaper and it shows the popularity of street cricket in Pakistan. Venue shown here is historic Hiran Minar complex in Shiekhupura.
……After many days of deliberation we called a ’shoora’ (cabinet) meeting of neighborhood boys and in that meeting it was unanimously decided to name the original ganja guy as ‘Tikanjoo’.
The logic behind this nomenclature was:
Ganja + Takloo = Tikanjoo
(Photo to the left is from Quetta, Pakistan and it shows ingenuity of players who have built the cricket wicket by stacking up stones.)
Tikanjoo had great passion for cricket. He would come out on the street earlier than me. Sometimes I saw him waiting for me to put wickets on the street so that he can get a break from his employers and come out to play. I would then send him to all the homes in neighborhood to ring call bells and ask the ‘V.I.P cricketers’ to come out.
Tikanjoo bowled really fast jerk balls. Just like Shoaib Akhtar he would run 32 steps and then throw cricket ball like a stone with out circling his arm over. To get a better picture, imagine Shoaib Akhter bowling in a fluttering 9 feet long ’shalwar qameez’ and wearing Bata’s ‘hawaai chappal’ (flat open slip-ons). ….
(I took this photograph in June 2005. Temperature at that time was 45 degree centigrade and I am not kidding. It shows the passion of cricket in Islamabad, Pakistan. These players are using a trash can as the wicket.)
…Poet Zameer Jaffri once said a ’sher’ about the West Indian fast bowler Wes Hall which perfectly fits the way Tikanjoo used to bowl in our steet. It goes like this:
shor uTha ke Hall aatat hai, khel ka intaqaal aata hai
Hall se pehlay ball aati hai, ball se pehlay Hall aata hai
If any batsman didn’t get out with technically correct bowling then we used to bring Tikanjoo to throw few balls. Due to incorrect bowling action of Tikanjoo, batsmen would usually complain that this act was an ‘ochaa hath-kanDaa’ (cheap stunt) on part of fielding side but to no avail. After ‘Tikanjoo’ was unleashed then more often than not, he would get the wicket of well set batsman.
As a rule of street cricket, a direct hit in neighbourhood homes was considered out…
(Photo to the right is from Quetta, Pakistan. It shows multiple cricket games going on at the same street.)
…. If someone got out in such manner, we used to request Tikanjoo to be a useful member of the team and prove his loyalty by bringing back the ball. He would then climb walls, climb window shades, reach roofs in no time and retrieve the ball for us.
Then one day Tikanjoo found work in another neighborhood and left our locality. He was talked about for few days and then everyone forgot about him. We grew up into our current roles of life. Nobody knows what happened to Tikanjoo after few months. Reminds me of this sher:
mohallay waalay na-haq khafa ho gayay warna
woh to ek andaaz tha os kay pyar karne ka
I hope wherever is Tikanjoo, he is fine and enjoying the cricket as much as he did in our childhood. At this moment I don’t even recall his real name but I just thought about him and it brought smile to me and thus I wanted to share above lines with you. Long live cricket and long live Pakistan.
(Photo to the above left is our street in Federal-B-Area, Karachi - Jan 2007 - where Tikanjoo used to bowl his super fast throws. The street looks deserted without a cricket wicket in the center and all the care free boys of yesteryears having grown up into men with responsibilities.)
Before ending this post, I also want to share a ’sher’ which my friend Amjad Hussain first told me:
jab cricket khela kartay the, osay wicket banaaya kartay the
hum jis se pani peetay the, woh maTka aakhir TooT gaya
A tape ball can also be reverse swung like a real cricket ball by shining one side and letting the other get dirty. I remember being able to swing the tape ball, but never had any success in swinging the hard ball.
Very nice post indeed. This has brought so many memories back when I use to play cricket in the same fashion. One thing just came into my mind about this women, we used to call her “ainkoon wali”,as she used to wear thick glasses and was maintaining her lawn all the time and would never give our ball back. We all had to contribute 1 rupee each in order to get a new ball. A ‘tiger’ brand tennis ball costed Rs.5 and Dunlop would cost Rs.15. Anyways so many balls she kept and never returned. I remember she was looking at us from somewhere and would come out at the same time when the ball would hit her gate or go inside. W e all used to hide away when she would come out and start staring. She’d say ‘kabhi parh bhi liya karo, pata nahi tum logoon ko aur kohi kaam nahi’. I heard a few years back she died, may Allah SWT rest her soul in peace, Ameen.
Those times were fun. I wish i could turn back the clock. The night tournament started just a few weeks before our matric exams, now this was a tough decision as I was an ultra fast bowler and a match winner for our team and my team was so much dependent on me and yes definately I was a hard hitting batsman too. It was common in those times that all good players were both batsman and bowler, so anyways, I used to sneak out in the night and played almost all matches but unfortunately my team couldn’t win
One thing more I’d mention here if you are out on the very first ball, there was always this excuse, ‘o yaar try ball thee’ lol
O my goodness, lovely lovey times those were
Ah well since everyone is recounting their old days, so should I.
We were not allowed to play Cricket in our school (Ibne Sina College, Lahore). Therefore no one would bring actual bats to the school lest they get punished for it. But being true to our Pakistani blood we had invented ways to make makeshift bats :D.
We used to fasten examination clipboards with thick books with heavy binds, and this instrument used to act as our bat :D.
I also remember shattering the windows of one our classes while playing, after which both the teams went MIA (missing in action :D).
Adnan - tape makes the otherwise ‘hairy’ ball - smooth, it improves its aerodynamics
thats why the added speed.
And yes, you’re right about the ganji ball spinning more, because it’s pure rubber against a hard surface
And how can you people forget the term..
Reloo Katta: A player who plays from both sides
Harris, I enjoyed reading the definition of ‘Dalda’
Must admit, this was new for me.
Very interesting article. Brought back some long forgotten memories. When I was little, my cousin who was a huge fan of Late Wasim Raja forced me to bat left handed even though I am naturally right handed. As a result I am a fully developed left handed batman now and can’t even touch the ball if I try to play right handed.
Street cricket will always have the honor of being the primary school for test cricket graduates. In Islamabad where I grew up, we used to have games in many residential streets. We even had “teams” made up of players who lived in neighboring streets and the rule was that in order to play in a specific team, you had to live in the pre-determined geographical area of that team.
Now I play with a leather ball clad in full kit on grounds dedicated for cricket in America, but the street cricket with tape ball in days when we had to collect donations just to buy a roll of Nitto tape (Rs/- 5) and an Ace ball (Rs/- 10)will always be near and dear to my heart.
Now that we are all remembering our glory days of street cricket I would like to add some terms that were frequently used in street cricket.
DALDA: The score added fraudulently to the batting team’s total since it was the batting team’s job to keep the score.
WATTA: The ball delivered with the jerk elbow action.
KHAPCHOO: Left handed batsman. Yours truly was the only one in our team.
TULLAY BAZ: A batsman who tried to hit every ball hard and hoped that one might go for a six. Much like Shahid Afridi.
SPINNER: A bowler who had no ability to ball fast was a self proclaimed spinner, even though he had no ability to spin either.
The most interesting aspect of street cricket for me was ‘tape ball’.
Generally tape ball helps to increase pace and “ganji” ball spins a lot, specially leg spin. This is my experience as a former medium fast bowler+leg spinner which could be different than others :-). mY delivery used to leg spin a lot like shane warne
The most interesting aspect of street cricket for me was ‘tape ball’. The way a tape gives weight to an otherwise light tennis ball and allows you to swing and move the ball of virtually any surface using the ‘grip’, makes the game play all the more interesting. And of course night cricket under ‘rented’ flood lights, another essential during Ramadan :D.