New Delhi:
In India, cricket is a religion played by millions if not billions of Indians all over the world. Like the football passion in Brazil where any lane or street becomes a football field, in India, every lane or street has the potential to become a playing ground. When one talks about street cricket or aptly called gully cricket in India, there are so many rules which are unique. For example, there is box style cricket in which if one hits a shot in the air in one particular region, the batsman is out. There are instances of one bounce, one hand catch in lot of gully cricket matches.
However, there is one aspect in which the batsman demands a trial ball if he is dismissed first ball. We have all done it in gully cricket. The love for batting is so high that one wants to bat, bat and bat as long as possible. If a batsman gets out, he immediately shouts he was 'not ready' and it is a 'trial ball'. There is plenty of arguments and the one who shouts the most probably gets to bat a lot more.
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This instance of a trial ball was highlighted by former India cricket team skipper MS Dhoni. In a video he shared on his social media handles, Dhoni highlighted how his friend, while playing gully cricket in the dark, was bowled first ball and he refused to leave after his dismissal citing that it was a trial ball. He captioned the photo by saying, "Wen U know what’s coming and start the camera and u get it in the nxt 1min, sorry for the bad light but it’s the lingo that’s fun trial ball, umpires decision last decision.brings back memory from school days.he wd have never accepted this ever happened if v didn’t have this video.all of us have witnessed this at some point of time in cricket.enjoy."
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Dhoni has not played for the Indian cricket team ever since the semi-final of the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup clash against New Zealand in Manchester. After the end of the tournament, Dhoni took a two-month break in which he served in the Indian territorial army for two weeks and made himself unavailable for selection for the West Indies and South Africa series. According to MSK Prasad, the chairman of selectors, Dhoni has not made himself available for the series against Bangladesh as well.
