THIS MARCH, as India’s national cricket team completed a 4–0 whitewash of the Australian team in the Gavaskar-Border test series, members of the Koli community in Dharavi were engrossed in their own cricket tournament. Played on the Holi Maidan near the northern edge of Dharavi, this 31-year-old tradition of chakri (wheel) cricket is entirely free of sponsor banners and stadium lights.
At a match I attended, between the Orient cricket team and the Dharavi Dolphins, spectators cheered and cracked wise as each bowler cantered towards the crease, accelerated, then rotated his arm backward through a full 360 degrees before releasing the rubber ball underarm. This windmill action, which gives the ball a frightening pace, is the source of the format’s name.
Fifty-eight-year-old Hareshwar Koli, a former textile mill worker, was the founder of the tournament, which has popularised the chakri style of play in the Koliwadas, or Koli settlements of three coastal parts of Mumbai: Worli, Prabhadevi and Dharavi.
He recounted that when he was a child, the Kolis of Dharavi played kabaddi during Holi. “But along came the ’80s, and the youth began turning to cricket,” he said. “Also, some of us youngsters were getting married and dropping out of sports in general. I wanted to bring the youth and married people together in a common activity. So I decided to organise a cricket tournament.”
The inaugural tournament, held in 1982, was not especially successful. “We struggled to get 14 teams on board,” Hareshwar said. But the game’s expansion has been impressive—the 2013 tournament had 92 teams, with 828 players drawn from the neighbourhood, across religions and castes.
Today, the tournament is also more professionally administrated, by the Dharavi Koli Jamaat Trust, the apex community body of the Dharavi Kolis. Senior player Prakash Mhatre clarified that “the tournament is open only to residents of Dharavi”.
Apart from the windmill bowling action, chakri cricket also has other quirks. There are two wicket-keepers, one standing outside the off-stump, the other by the leg-stump. The leg wicket-keeper position exists to collect stray balls—in chakri cricket, bowling wide on the leg-side is permitted, and not penalised. This is because the chakri action, which gives the ball its pace, also makes it harder to control its direction. Hareshwar doesn’t know who invented the bowling action, offering by way of explanation only that “people rotated their arm all the way around to bowl fast”.
Other rules evolved over the years through verbal agreement, and remain unwritten. Hareshwar explained that because the leg-side of the Holi Maidan is cramped, a boundary on the leg-side fetches only two runs instead of the customary four. Batsmen keen on notching up fours and sixes have to aim their strokes to the relatively spacious off-side. An innings lasts three overs, except in the final, when it lasts five overs. There are nine men to a side, and each team pays an entry fee of Rs 470 to participate, playing a series of knockout games in the hope of winning the tournament.
This year’s finalists were Ekvira A and Ekvira B, two teams from the same youth association. The final match proved to be an impressive display of how versatile chakri bowling can be. There were head-high bouncers and low-rising deliveries, startling the batsmen. Bowlers even bowled spins and other slow deliveries with the same action. Ekvira B won the match, and the tournament cash prize of Rs 10,000 with it.
As evening fell, the finalist teams left the field together. Less than 50 metres from the pitch, the Kolis lit the Holi bonfire. The fire grew, the flames casting their glow on the faces of gathered spectators—children, youth and the middle-aged. When it began to die down, the spectators departed, many cramming into the alleyway that led to the bar facing the maidan. The Orient cricket team gathered outside the maidan and dissected the reasons behind its defeat in the elimination round. The general conclusion was that the members had had insufficient practice owing to their job schedules. The players promised each other that they would do better next year, and returned to their homes, where piping hot Holi dinners of traditional fish and chicken curries lay waiting for them.