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
Nasir sahih kaha. It is said that behind every successful cricket team there is a ‘khwaar’ manager
This guy doesn’t play very well himself because ‘dil ke armaaN aaNso’ouN meiN beh gayay’ but he tirelessly loves to arrange matches, collect players from their homes, arrange for lunches and logistics and then watch the game from sidelines. Cricket is alive because of personalities like such.
Owias Bhai..
An article which definately brought back some good old times….
With all this … there was always a player in the team, who is Karta Tharta (just like you)…who is always first one on the field ( by field I meant gali) and then he starts ringing bell of all the other players…in better days, start calling them from Zuhr…if there is a match in the evening.
Thanks for bringing back our good old memories….
Talking of different colours for tape, what I remember is that white tape came much later, and its quality was not very good; it used to wear out very quickly. Is that still the case or is there better white tape as well now?
Once she even used a knife to cut the tennis ball into two pieces and then throw the two pieces out of the wall onto the road
Amazing. I wonder how did she do that? Seems like an art
Speaking of tape ball, I remmeber sometimes a friend of mine used to apply double tape. He did tell me the reason but I don’t remember anymore.
LOL @ Khalifa. I thought this “khalifa” thing was just associated with my mohallah but guess it’s also one of global term of street cricket.
I guess these kind of characters exist in every community and neighborhood
yes. Without such characters street cricket is very boring.
My dear Owais , I guess these kind of characters exist in every community and neighborhood but still when I look back, I really enjoy even thinking of those times and the ‘dant’ that she used to give us even though we use to make our pitch much away from her house.
I wonder if kids of today enjoy as much as we used to, cuz I dont know but I feel that people’s attitudes have also changed and the sincerity and affection is gone!
Dear Zakoota. I enjoyed reading your description of ‘ainkoN wali’ lady. We also had similar character who would never return our cricket ball. Once she even used a knife to cut the tennis ball into two pieces and then throw the two pieces out of the wall onto the road, where we shouting for her to return our ball
Our street was basically ‘bowler gali’. We made all effort to provide extra advantage to bowlers so that more and more batsmen could get to bat (because of numbering). Therefore we used to keep ‘jhirri’ on tape ball to get swing and keep the batsman-bowler distance to 16-18 human steps which is much closer that standard 22 yards cricket pitch length.
The wierdest thing that we ever did to give bowlers extra advanage was to play with an oval ball. We wrapped tape on the ball so hard that it became oval (anda) shape. Batsman could never guess which way the ball would turn because oval shape leaves swing/turn all to a chance. This practise didn’t last long b/c batsmen complained and bowlers also didn’t like that swing/turn was left to chance instead of their own controlled swing.