Gilli-danda

1970, Instructor, Volume 80, Instructor Publications It is played by children of all ages. Boys like it especially, but it is not unusual to see girls and even adults playing Gilli Danda!

Bhuvan the hero of the film to understand 'cricket', relates it to his understanding of their native folk game of Gilli Danda. He says: ball (image of the silli thing) is gola-gola-ball, bat-phalli-phalli-bat.

The indigenous games like gilli-danda, goli, kabaddi, tash, kabootar urana (pigeon flying), erhi koodna (long jump), surra, cheel jhapatna, tahat etc., were commonly played by both children and adults of the village[...]

This happens because the hero of the film asserts that cricket is only a poor copy of their own age-old children's game of gilli-danda. So this mockery inverts the colonizing mission of civilizing the childlike natives on its head and also 'desecrates the "purity" of cricket roots' asserted by the British.

Also called guli danda, Gilli Danda is a sport for an amateur which is very popular among rural youth. It is known as Danguli in Bengali, Kuttiyam Kolum in Malayalam, Kitti-Pullu in Tamil, Chinni-Dandu in Kannada, Gooti-Billa in Telugu and Lappa-Duggi in Pashto. It follows the structure of cricket or baseball, only it is played with sticks.

A game of gilli-danda continues until all players have had a turn at being on strike. The winning team is the side that records the most danda lengths and thus scores the most points.