Street cricket chronicles: Deuce ball, Half out, and the great Olympian spirit of West Bengal

We started with Delhi, moved to Karnataka, and now head to West Bengal for our next edition of the street cricket chronicles.

Through this series we hope to bring out the cricket culture in different cities at the most amateur levels: whether it is on the streets, in the gullies and driveways and terraces, on beaches, or in the parks.

In this episode we chat with two guests who grew up in Kolkata and Asansol in the 1980s and 1990s.

Talking points:

Rubber, Deuce, Rubber-Deuce and Cambis balls

Influence of the long monsoon and early sunset on the street cricket dynamics

Seasonal switch between cricket and football

Genteel Kolkata and the not-so-genteel Asansol

Parents as match referees

Why Harbhajan Singh would have struggled in street cricket in West Bengal

Pocket money? What is that alien concept?

The contentious wide calls and the self-regulating rule

Bricks as stumps and real-time Hawkeye problems

Cricket as an individual sport and the near-universal chronology of batting and bowling line-ups

The popularity of Abdul Qadir in the '80s in Kolkata and how his bowling action was the most imitated in the streets

Mimicking Azhar's fielding, Srikanth's mannerisms, Hudson's batting stance

Participants:

Abhishek Mukherjee (@ovshake42)

Shom Biswas

Mahesh Sethuraman (@cornerd)

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Lead image from here

Related:

Abhishek Mukherjee's writings at Cricketcountry, Firstpost, Sportstar

Abhishek Mukherjee on Azharuddin's 182 against England at Eden Gardens in 1993

Abhijit Gupta on the glossary of gully cricket in Kolkata

Just another Bengali playing cricket on the streets

Street Cricket Chronicles from Delhi – 81allout archive

Street Cricket Chronicles from Karnataka - 81allout archive