THEY used to gather there every afternoon for a friendly game of street cricket and I used to watch them every day from afar. “No, beti, girls don’t play cricket in streets,” it was explained to me. “What will people say?”

When I insisted, my father bought me a bat, balls and protective gear to play the game — but inside the boundary walls of my house, with my brother. Then big brother, whose nose rarely emerged from his comic books, was coerced into going to toss the ball around a bit with his tomboy sister. But cricket on our lawns, spacious though they were, was no match for the fun the boys on the street were having in their congested surroundings. I could only watch from the sidelines.

Fast forward to 2015; who cares what people say? Bring out the bats and balls, come one, come all! It’s the girls’ day out, and they’re breaking all barriers, all boundaries — they’re playing cricket on the streets.

“When my little sister, Iman, wanted to play cricket with the neighbourhood boys, they told her to go away. Now we have our own teams and all girls are welcome to play with us,” said Sadia Khatri, who had started the hashtag #girlsatdhabas on the social media in order to encourage other young women to reclaim public spaces. Later, another hashtag, #reclaimingpublicspace, was born and now we have #girlsplayingstreetcricket.

Her friend Natasha Ansari, outside whose home the young women had gathered for two innings of street cricket on a Defence Phase-V road on a cloudy Sunday afternoon, also has childhood memories of when she and her sister would watch boys playing cricket just across their house. “When the two of us came out to join them, they wouldn’t let us play with them,” she remembered. “Even the notion of us wanting to play outside and with them was a funny thing for them. They couldn’t imagine it.” By contrast, now, Natasha had no issues with young men joining them for the match, as a couple did.

“We are Mount Holyoke alumnae,” Natasha told me. “Returning home after completing our studies there in the US, we felt stuck. We had to do something about it, so here we are,” she added. With Sadia and Natasha are Iman Malik, Najia Sabahat Khan and Sara Nisar who also serve as moderators of their Facebook pages.

For the invitation to play a cricket match, they got quite a few positive responses — though it being a Sunday, many who had said earlier that they were coming to play, couldn’t. “My own mother, who was going to umpire, couldn’t come due to another last-minute engagement,” Sadia informed me as a few cars passing by slowed down in curiosity.

Some players came in their best evening wear, some in jeans and T-shirts and others in casual shalwar kameez; on their feet some wore khussas, some ballet flats, while others came in sandals or lace-ups. There were dancing ponytails and swaying plaits as balls bouncing off walls became ‘sixers’ and balls going into other people’s homes or breaking windows meant an instant ‘out’. But when doors were knocked upon with polite requests to return the ball, no one cursed. In fact, other residents came out on their balconies to watch and cheer along with the modest crowd doing the same from the driveway of Natasha’s house. There were arguments about whether someone should be given an ‘out’ when one ball got lost somewhere in a dense tree. It turned out to be a ‘four’ eventually, but in all the excitement they forgot to note the score.

Yet it wasn’t really about keeping score or even cricket for that matter. Some of the young women coming to join the group didn’t even know how to play; one confused wicketkeeping with goalkeeping and another decided to bowl underarm. The cricket match on the street is in fact a statement that women have the right to come out of the boundaries they are expected to be surrounded by. ‘Girls at dhabas’ is also about breaking stereotypes and stepping out to do something as simple as enjoying tea at a roadside eatery. “The experience of having tea at a dhaba is delightful,” laughed Sadia. “And there’s something about the tea at dhabas, too, so I go there to have tea even if I’m sitting on wooden benches outside most of the time.”

There was sudden applause amid loud cheers that turned into echoes as the sound bounced off the walls of the neighbourhood. A petite fielder was being encouraged to get under the ball and take a catch but the big hit by a strong-armed batswoman landed the ball in a puddle. What was that American astronaut Neil Armstrong said about small steps and giant leaps? Stride on, ladies!

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2015

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