Games & Recreation The Backyard Cricket Thread

[Smoooothy]

I wanna play backyard now dammit

Did anyone else also rig up spotlights to extend play an hour or two?

 

[Karnezis_13]

Why the hate for beach cricket? If you clear out a solid pitch spectacular catches can be made, incredible run outs performed as the batsman who's been in for 15 minutes starts to plod across the sand, and most of all the amount of fly-by fielders who join in the longer the game goes on, take a catch, have a slog and set off on their way again.

(Having said that having a cricket oval over the road complete with cricket nets on the side growing up was a fair sight better )

 

[The_Reaper]

Bowler has to name an international/first class wicket keeper to be the auto wicky.
Otherwise the batsman can claim it's Kamran Akmal

 

[Plugger35]

I wanna play backyard now dammit

Did anyone else also rig up spotlights to extend play an hour or two?

Day/Nighters? That would've been awesome but once the sun went down that was end of play for us and you'd be called in for dinner.

It used to be mostly driveway cricket for us rather than backyard cricket, my best mate at primary school lived next door to me and his driveway was like an indoor cricket net. It was all closed in with his garage door at the back of the driveway being the auto-wickie/slips cordon, his house and our shared fence was only a few feet away either side so runs were hard to come by on the off and leg side. Like indoor cricket the big runs were straight down the ground, the footpath across the road was the boundary and over the footpath was six. Our neighbours must have got sick of us smacking tennis balls in to their front yards and foraging around for them.

We weren't too popular with my mate's older sisters either, they were in their late teens and weren't too impressed when we'd kick off an early morning cricket session on a Saturday or Sunday with tennis balls thudding in to the garage door and their house while they were trying to sleep in with a hangover after going out partying.

We had no concept of sleeping in and hangovers at our age though so we were a bit shocked when they'd tell us to f*** off and die, in hindsight I can see where they were coming from.

 

[d0gs]

The ball had to be a swing king and must be made with duct/masking tape. If there was notable wear on the ball it had to be repaired.
Hitting the kennel was out, not matter how many bounces.
When played in the driveway, hitting into the neighbour's house across the road on the full was a 6, only way to get out in the driveway was caught behind with auto keeper and slips, LBW, bowled or caught. There was some long long batting sessions in the driveway that's for sure.

 

[Plugger35]

The ball had to be a swing king and must be made with duct/masking tape. If there was notable wear on the ball it had to be repaired.
Hitting the kennel was out, not matter how many bounces.
When played in the driveway, hitting into the neighbour's house across the road on the full was a 6, only way to get out in the driveway was caught behind with auto keeper and slips, LBW, bowled or caught. There was some long long batting sessions in the driveway that's for sure.

Yeah it was a flat batting pitch on the driveway, as a bowler you were just relying on the batsman to make a mistake because the concrete pitch never broke up, there were no new balls or reverse swing etc.

To change it up and make it more challenging we would bat with different sports equipment in each innings increasing in difficulty..

You'd start off batting with a normal cricket bat, then you'd have to bat with a tennis racquet, a squash raquet, a hockey stick, a cricket stump and then a golf club.

We used to hit some huge sixes with the tennis raquet, on to the neigbours roofs or over them into their backyards.

 

[Dan]

Pretty standard BC rules covered in the thread.

We would play on the stamped driveway at our place with just a standard tennis ball at first. That sort of surface allowed good carry through/bounce. However at first it was easy to bat on because the ball would never deviate off the surface. So no matter how fast the bowling was you'd just play to the line of the ball and you'd be fine. So to make it harder for the batsmen we'd have a variety of balls in three buckets for the bowler to use.....

1st bucket had 4-5 standard yellow tennis balls.
2nd bucket was filled with water and another 4-5 standard yellow tennis balls. A wet tennis ball on our driveway deck made the ball skid through quicker.
&
3rd bucket had 4-5 home made swing balls. We'd use yellow tape on the tennis balls when making em so that it would be harder for the batsmen to notice it from a distance.

With those in place, before each delivery the batsmen faces in the opposition direction so that bowler can pick his ball without the batsmen knowing which ball it is. When the bowler has picked his ball, he yells out ''done/finished'', batsmen can then turn around. Batting became a lot harder But bowling became a lot more fun

When your bowling you learn quickly not to damp the ball too much because the batsmen can tell if its dripping. When using the swing ball, gotta hide the tape side in the palm of ya hand for as long as possible. Although showing the batsmen that you are using the swing ball but end up bowling a straight delivery did sometimes work in getting wickets.

A lot fun and fond memories

 

[Lensen]

as i mentioned earlier we would actually have line ups etc so it was always a big thing to get an individual century for one of your "batsmen"

in one of our 20 over games my brother had a bat on 96* and needed one to win, and there hadn't been a century all summer. i was a terrible loser and didn't want him to get it so bowled a deliberate wide to give him the win.

 

[Lensen]

I wanna play backyard now dammit

Did anyone else also rig up spotlights to extend play an hour or two?

back when the sheffield shield was trialling the day/night games in the 90s with the orange ball, we managed to manufacture a sort of game down the side of the house where there was a big light that would give enough light to be able to play

the shield had orange balls though and we couldn't replicate that with tape, so my brother had the "genius" idea to cover a tennis ball in orange crepe paper and then tape it up with clear sticky tape

the ball would last about four overs. which was really about two overs more than the "actual" orange balls lasted in the shield at the time

 

[CakeEater]

In the games between my brother and I, there used to be a massive palm tree at point for the right hander and square leg for the lefty (such as myself).

If you hit that you were gone.

Mates who played with me could never work out why I never hit a pull shot.

 

[radiojake]

in one of our 20 over games my brother had a bat on 96* and needed one to win, and there hadn't been a century all summer. i was a terrible loser and didn't want him to get it so bowled a deliberate wide to give him the win.

Classic

That would've been the kind of thing my brother would do and would royally piss me off -

 

[Smoooothy]

as i mentioned earlier we would actually have line ups etc so it was always a big thing to get an individual century for one of your "batsmen"

in one of our 20 over games my brother had a bat on 96* and needed one to win, and there hadn't been a century all summer. i was a terrible loser and didn't want him to get it so bowled a deliberate wide to give him the win.

Magnificent

 

[Gough]

In the games between my brother and I, there used to be a massive palm tree at point for the right hander and square leg for the lefty (such as myself).

If you hit that you were gone.

Mates who played with me could never work out why I never hit a pull shot.

It funny how backyard cricket plays a part in shaping a person's shotmaking. Greg Chappell's famous flick off the hip developed as a result of fruit trees as fieldsman in his backyard growing up in Glenelg.

 

[Scotland]

in one of our 20 over games my brother had a bat on 96* and needed one to win, and there hadn't been a century all summer. i was a terrible loser and didn't want him to get it so bowled a deliberate wide to give him the win.

You are the Trevor Chappell of backyard cricket.

 

[Gough]

You are the Trevor Chappell of backyard cricket.

As a schoolboy cricketer Trevor was the most successful of them all, he broke records held since the time of Clem Hill at PAC.

 

[CakeEater]

It funny how backyard cricket plays a part in shaping a person's shotmaking. Greg Chappell's famous flick off the hip developed as a result of fruit trees as fieldsman in his backyard growing up in Glenelg.

For me it developed my lack of shots, its why my leave of the ball just outside leg is my favorite shot.

 

[Gough]

For me it developed my lack of shots, its why my leave of the ball just outside leg is my favorite shot.

We had a granny flat on the offside which we used to chalk (was made of Hardie plank) fieldmen on, so you could set a bit of an off side field. Gran was deaf as a post too so she didn't hear or complain when the ball thudded into her house.

 

[CakeEater]

We had a granny flat on the offside which we used to chalk (was made of Hardie plank) fieldmen on, so you could set a bit of an off side field. Gran was deaf as a post too so she didn't hear or complain when the ball thudded into her house.

Grans are good like that.

Our next door neighbour used to look over the back fence and umpire.

 

[kfc1]

My bro and i outgrew the backyard very quickly and migrated to the pretty quiet street. Worked very well as dad had an old work van parked in the street which we used as a keeper and slip. Cars would be parked in random spots at random times so made for variable field placements. The only out was if it went over a house on the full. Had an open drain at the bottom of a slight hill behind the bowler which resulted in a lot of lost balls or ventures into the drain.

We played test matches and i gave my bro a 300 run handicap to try and even it up. Proper scorecards were kept and then put into a spreadsheet on rainy days.

Kids across the road (girl and boy about 5 years younger) used to come watch and field a bit every arvo. Hated having to give them a bat or bowl as it would interrupt the test match lol. As an aside the girl is now pretty hot #layby

Did anyone play a game cslled trap? I used to play this with 3-6 mates in a mates culdesac. Rules were a bit different to normal cricket but im struggling to remember

 

[SugarShane]

as i mentioned earlier we would actually have line ups etc so it was always a big thing to get an individual century for one of your "batsmen"

in one of our 20 over games my brother had a bat on 96* and needed one to win, and there hadn't been a century all summer. i was a terrible loser and didn't want him to get it so bowled a deliberate wide to give him the win.

Not a single thing wrong with that. I would be disappointed with anything else. Gotta look after those bowling figures too.

 

[Jackfrost]

My brother and I still play when we go to the holiday house for hours. In addition to those before me I'll add:

One hand one bounce has to be a clean grab, no fumbles allowed.

We also have 'Boonie' which is a chair placed anywhere you like and hitting Boonie on the full is out.

 

[Threadkilla]

We had a granny flat on the offside which we used to chalk (was made of Hardie plank) fieldmen on, so you could set a bit of an off side field. Gran was deaf as a post too so she didn't hear or complain when the ball thudded into her house.

Very similar to the setup my brother and I had in our backyard. However, instead of the fieldsman on the granny flat, we drew a mercantile mutual sign (remember when they used to have those signs in the mercantile mutual domestic comp during the early 90s? Showing my age here!) with charcoal from the BBQ and if you hit that you were rewarded with 10 runs.

 

[Jackfrost]

We played bowling into Dad's garage which was about a 3 step run up and about an 18m pitch and played with indoor cricket balls. There was a rough patch of concrete outside leg stump that if you hit right would result in bowling the batter around their legs. The best part was the concrete joint just short of a length and if you hit it perfectly you could turn a length ball into a vicious bouncer. My brother and I knew to play off the back foot around that length but many laughs were had when unsuspecting friends would come around as I can get them down at around 115-120km/h and you would get them reaching for the 'length' ball only to have it lodged into their armpit.

 

[bradrowe#32]

We had a long, narrow block. Made us play very straight.

 

[Joker91]

Auto Wicket
Over the fence (6 and out)
LBW is a rule
One hand one bounce (once someone makes 50)