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oad-shedding cuts the lights in the middle of a boring math tuition class, and like everyone else he bolts out of the house and up to the roof. He bowls between two water tanks, the taped tennis ball smacks hard against the makeshift crate wicket, and every kid on the roof shouts in unison, “Aaaout (out).”
The British introduced us to cricket; we owned it. We moved it onto rooftops and into gullies and along the crooked stretches of the street where fruit carts are parked. And, in doing so, we turned the game into a neighbourhood technology for a city that has no room for neat playgrounds.
On a rooftop you learn to negotiate around a clothesline and a satellite cable; in the gully you learn to time your run between a passing rickshaw and a parked bicycle. The practice is its own quiet magic: how cricket reshapes our rooftops and gullies into fields, how rules take shape in the pauses between shouts, and how the way we split into teams can reveal more about us than any scoreboard ever will.
Cricket has a way of bending to fit our lives. A sudden downpour turns the gully into a slip-and-slide. Suddenly there is an extra rule of puddle-dodging, because desi moms will never acquiesce that daagh toh achhay hotay hain. In summers, the heat chases the players onto the pitch at dawn and sends them home before noon. Even load-shedding plays umpire by halting play, then restarting it under a neighbour’s flashlight, where every run feels just a little more precious.
What looks like play is often childcare by rotation. With the children out on the roof there is a permitted quiet on the balcony, a sanctioned excuse for gossip and chai for the mothers. Older siblings slip instinctively into informal sitter roles; the boy with the meanest yorker maybe the one keeping an eye on a toddler nearby. Responsibility travels through fielding positions and overs rather than through lectures. These apprenticeships teach negotiation, patience and a practical kind of leadership that classroom timetables never mention.
In street cricket, the laws are local and fiercely enforced. One bounce and you are out. A roof catch counts as six… unless it hits the water tank. Captaincy reads like politics; who calls the teams reveals alliances and favours; much like in life.
Safety is not an abstract policy here but patchwork choreography. Neighbours return balls without complaint (except that one uncle — you know who I am talking about) and lend ladders when a ball lands two stories up. After a bad fall or a smashed window, the neighborhood sometimes imposes a quiet boycott of rooftop play until trust is rebuilt.
These trade-offs are part of the lesson, and are more than sentimental nostalgia because they teach kids about the messy work of communal life. The gullies themselves are changing as street crime creeps in. Tackling this requires reclaiming public space through community care and active presence, so safety becomes a shared responsibility, not a luxury reserved for a few.
Then there’s the power of abstract rules that bind without a rulebook. In street cricket, the laws are local and fiercely enforced. One bounce and you are out. A roof catch counts as six… unless it hits the water tank. Captaincy reads like politics; who calls the teams reveals alliances and favours, much like in life, whether in corporate boardrooms or family gatherings — leadership often emerges from networks, quiet deals and the art of keeping allies close.
Gender and authority complicate the field. Girls are often spectators, but aunties on the third floor can be the sternest umpires; a single, decisive balcony call can end more arguments than any boyish shout.
Things are shifting as more brothers are handing the bat to their younger sisters. In those moments, the street expands in ways that feel quietly revolutionary.
There is a common concern that many kids now prefer the comfort of indoors to the heat and dust of the street, but the screen can be an opportunity. A YouTube tutorial can teach a perfect reverse sweep to a child who’s never met a coach and online drills can polish skills sharp enough to carry them to a professional league. Technology is here to stay, and it’s better to join it if we cannot beat it.
If policing, privatisation of space or the steady lure of screens squeeze these games away, we will not only lose an afternoon’s laughter but also a functioning system of social schooling where a neighbourhood teaches its young how to make rules, arbitrate disputes and accept a bad call. Rooftop and gully cricket is a school of civic life, improvised every afternoon, teaching its lessons one over at a time.
Kiva Malick is anacademician and a writer who focuses on education, philosophy, musicand culture.