A taste of indoor cricket in freezing cold

In western europe once season closes in September or in early October, virtually there is n chance to play until April. Some places are luckier as they have more enthusiastic players who go all out to find some possibility of playing cricket. When I played with the St. Columbas Cricket Club in Providence, USA, we  used to rent a baseball batting cage for training. Main land Europe has no baseball (and how nice is that) so opportunity to find such batting cages.
Some teams are lucky enough to find indoor facilities to stay in touch with cricket. Our friends in Basel have access to an indoor gym which has three basketball courts laid side-by-side. And they very generously invited us to try out their indoor cricket facility. 
Cricket is an amazingly scalable game. The indoor practice game with Basel Cricket Club was an example of that. The playing area was slightly more than two basketball courts, something like a 24x24 meters^2. Height was perhaps 10 meters. The floor was soft rubber but most of us had to play barefoot as we did not have indoor shoes (no one thought about that). But playing barefoot brought old memories of from my village when on a wet field it was more convenient to take off the shoes to get a better grip on a socked field.
So how do you play cricket in such limited space. That too with 20 guys. Well, exploit the fact that cricket has no rules only laws and within the laws anything is possible. This makes cricket and amazingly scalable game. So we agreed on following conditions:


- we will play with a red rubber ball, which could bounce and swing but not hard enough to hurt you any bad. Also because there was air in the ball, so it wouldnt carry too much in the air
- The side walls counted for one run by default and on top the batsmen could run any number of runs. 
- The front wall counted for four or six (i.e. a direct hit)
- Rebounds off the two side and the front wall were legal and batman would be deemed out
- The ceiling did not count for default runs but rebounds were legal
- With so many fielders and such hard restriction it is obvious that wickets will fall. So batsmen will bat in pairs. Each pair will bat for four overs. For each wicket five runs will be deducted from the score
- Each bowler can bowl maximum four over.


Initially we were a bit uncertain of the playing conditions, but we trusted our hosts that wickets would just tumble. Small field with 9 fielders were bound to make field runs difficult and rebound catches of the wall meant that hitting sixes was a not safe either. On the top of that the rule that wickets will reduce the score by five runs made it all the way more interesting. 
We batted first. Reading the ball was difficult enough but right in the first over we learned that running on that field was also a skill. Without proper shoes it was not easy to stop. Most cases there was a danger of running into the wall. 
But it was all fun. Batsmen were getting out as it was a norm. Every wicket costed few runs, one or two wickets. Score was always going up and down. We at one point were 44 in 16 overs, which we thought was very good. But then few wickets brought it down to 17. Somehow we managed to get 35 on the board.  We were not sure if was good or not. But in the process we had had so much fun and laugh while watching our guys getting out in a funny ways, that nothing really mattered. My favorite was Saghir's fall to reach the batting crease to avoid a run out and when a ball rebounded off a fielder and beat Vijay and hit the wicket and yet another runout. I was fooled when a shot hit the bowling side wickets directly and I thought I was out but someone suggested for an overthrow and I got myself runout. List is long I cant count.

We lost at least 18 wickets, so the final score of 35 wasnt that bad. Most wickets were run outs, a testament of Basel's superb fielding and our poor judging of what should be a run in that field.
We bowled well, kept the Basel CC clamped to single digits until 13 overs. The a partnership too the score to 26 in next four overs. But we knew that a couple of wickets will bring it back to us. And thats what exactly happened. In the end we won by 10 -12 runs. But it was a long time any of us was playing cricket of any kind.
Winning was good but that was not the main concern. It was important to get together, meet friends in pur team and in the Basel team and enjoy the game. We certainly reached that goal. A couple of new guys showed up. They have a big task ahead to replace Rajesh and Arpit and soon Purav. Lets see how the season will unfold. But this indoor experience ignited a desire in us to find a similar facility in the neighborhood of Freiburg. It is going to be difficult but lets see...
Cricketers in Switzerland are far more adventures compared to those in Germany. For instance, Winterthur cricket club have tried playing in the Alps during winter. Other clubs have tried frozen lakes. All this because we love this game, we live this game and life goes on and so does cricket...outdoor in cricket field, football field, lawn, indoor, frozen lakes and in Alps.