5 gully cricket skills relevant at the highest level

#3 Saqlain Mushtaq off breaks

Spin it and exploit the uneven surface!

Yes, it is not only the batsmen who get to benefit from gully cricket. The bowlers benefit too. How many times have you watched an off break bowler like Saqlain Mushtaq or Harbhajan Singh and practised bowling those offies?

The gripping off breaks and sharp leg breaks mixed with the straight ball, are something you use in your daily life in gully cricket. Off breaks turn a mile and the doosra and googly bamboozle the batsmen. Gully cricketers practice the whole day with different grips on the ball to get your doosra and googly right.

Another unwritten and interesting rule in gully cricket states that a batsman who fails to get bat on ball three balls in a row is ruled out. With the kind of skills a gully cricket batsman possesses, it takes special skills to make him miss thrice in a row.

That is where those bag of tricks with the ball come into play and the uneven surface helps one to get the batsman out.

Ravichandran Ashwin had ample practice with the carrom ball in the streets before he bowled the magnificent ball to Hashim Amla in the WorldT20 in 2014.