Every child in India will have remnants of their childhood linked to the game of cricket. Along the banks of the ganges, during the shutdowns in Kashmir, across the open fields in Bihar, in the narrow bastis of Dharavi and Chandni Chowk, and during monsoon in Mumbai, the culture of cricket is inherent in every corner of India. In a game, almost synonymous to religion in our country, there are no boundaries of gender, age or caste… the only boundaries that matter are the sixes and fours.
For the children of India, this Sunday morning ritual calls for – dividing players into teams, setting up make-shift wickets at the batting end, segregating the colony or basti into boundaries for the ‘sixers’, using local lingo picked up from the older players, tossing with a one-rupee coin and finally, playing a long, passion-filled game of cricket.
This World Cup Cricket, don’t miss this photo-essay, that exuberates in every frame, the joy children find in playing their favourite game despite no place to play.
Any empty space is a cricket pitch…
Be it in narrow alleys
Across railway tracks…
Or on sandy beaches..
Perfectly acceptable substitutes for stumps are…
Bamboo sticks, tires, bricks, stones or even firecracker boxes..
Tin pieces from demolished rooftops
Police shields …
And empty liquor bottles..
Discarded chairs or Chalk drawings on walls…
Picture Credits : Unknown
Card board boxes, leaves and cloth pieces act well as knee pads…
Picture Credits : Reddit
Boundary walls are…
Picture Credits : Vivek Prakash
Entrances to temples…
Picture Credits : Sanjay Austa
Rocky Mountains sides…
Picture Credits : Matthew Lewis
The insides of a truck
Thatched roofs and mud walls…
Or even riversides and lakes
But nothing stops children from finding ways to play their favourite game
