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With the picture of the Dead cat embedded in my head, I drove to Insportz in Al Qouz to play some cricket. When I got there at 7:10am, only Sag and Kun had reached and they had been informed that our booking was at 8am and not at 7:15am...the time Div had told us the booking was at. Div, Gagan, Raul and Rit were still on their way somewhere near the 1st interchange so at around 7:25am me, Sag and Kun decided to go have some breakfast at the Emarat petrol station nearby. Got back to Insportz at around 7:45am after making sure the rest of them had already reached.
An Insportz staff gave us a brief idea of the general rules about scoring, wides, wickets etc. Indoor cricket played is completely different from normal cricket. Let me try to explain it with the help of this sketch.
- The pitch is the blue area.
- The red lines are the wickets.
- The black horizontal lines divides the whole area into three parts which effects how many runs a team gets on hitting the nets. As shown on the sketch, if the ball hits the net in the specified section, then the batting team scores but only if on the same delivery they also complete a physical run. So for example, even if I hit a six, I need to at least run a single physical run to get those 6 runs as well as the one I run making it 7. If I don't, then I score 0 and not 6.
- The yellow circles is the batsman and the non striker. If you're wondering why the non striker isn't near the wicket, well in indoor cricket, the physical run is completed by running between that horizontal line and the main wicket and not in between the two wickets.
- The bowler still bowls from the wicket line and not where the non striker is standing.
- Normal catches are applicable but so are catches off nets i.e. if a shot is played that hits any net (except for the straight net which is a 6) directly and a fielder manages to catch the ball, it is still counted as a wicket.
- Every pair of batsmen are given a fixed number of overs i.e. even if they become out, they can continue to bat till the allotted overs get over.
- When a team loses a wicket, it loses 5 runs.
- A wide ball is worth 2 runs, is counted and is not re-bowled except when it's the last over of the batting pairs allotted overs. This only applies if the balls first bounce is on the pitch. If the ball bounces outside the pitch, it's counted as a wide irrespective of where it goes after bouncing and the batting team gets 3 runs while the delivery needs to be re-bowled.
- A no ball is also worth 2 runs and does not need to be re-bowled(I think).
- The ball is always active, i.e the batsmen can run almost anytime.
- When the ball hits the side net and then the straight net, then the team is given one more run. Eg if the ball hits the net in section 3, the team gets 2 runs. And if the ball then with the flow of the shot hits the straight net, then it becomes 3 runs and the total would be 4 runs if the team has run a physical run. If not than it would be 0.
- The Score of a team cannot remain unchanged for 3 balls. If it does then it's counted as -5 runs i.e. a wicket.
- A wicket keeper is optional.
- If the ball hits the top net, no runs are counted. Only physical runs are counted unless the ball hits some other net as well.
- Overthrows are there.
I think I've covered most of the stuff. I wonder if it makes any sense. Anyway we played two matches. 8 overs per side and managed to squeeze it all in just over 2 hours. We were exhausted, dehydrated and full of excitement. This indoor cricket might seem easy at first but it's one great workout and we loved it. The only reason we can't do this every week is because we can't afford it. AED35 per hour per player so we ended up spending a whopping total AED560 for 2 hours and that does not include the transport, salik, food and water cost. So we might does this once in a month which is sad but something is better than nothing.
Anyway just one crappy shot from the day as I didn't use my DSLR and instead took some snapshot with my mobile.
