A Combat named 'Badla'

“It’s not a cakewalk. I never expected it to be. I sense I had a terrible accident. My head was whirling, and I stood facing the wall, with repugnance to myself. But there was no one else to blame. I need to face the anguish and pain myself. Why else should I try to play a pull when the ball is so short, quick and directed at my face? I missed the ball completely and it battered me right on the sweet spot in the wedge of my nose. There I was, batting on 29, on the verge of a triple century to reach the highest ever score in our Playground, but hit the 7th time precisely on my face by a short quicker one from Guru. I needed to focus. I needed to take those moments off my memory, and concentrate on the next ball. Guru has already declared that it would be his last ball. After this Dhanush would start off his whizzers, that shoot off like a bullet from good length on leg stump and whizz past the off stump. It will be difficult for me to adjust quickly to that, and there are chances that I miss out on my first triple century. Guru is ready with the ball looking ominous from his hands. I forget my pain, I try to focus. I try to see only the green patch of tennis ball and the movement of fingers holding the ball. I see that slinging yorker, that Guru often gets me out with, wriggle out of his hands and loom towards me like a speeding bullet. I see the green circle that’s approaching me and I bring down the bat to my legs. I hit my toe on the way to meet the ball, but yes – my bat met the ball on yorking length, and it bounced off the pitch to the wall – I hit the first triple century. While jumping around from the pain on my toes, I slowly and proudly raised my bat at my opponents, the fiercest enemies when in The Playground – Guru and Dhanush. And shouted at them… Badlaaahhhh”

This was a scene at midnight, couple of weeks back in our house. There have been lots of queries raised to myself and Dhanush, on what exactly is this ‘Badla’ that features in our blog often. Hence, we decided that we would handle ‘Badla’ in the blogosphere together.

Let me issue the warnings first.
Those who are not aware of cricket might find the post a bit absurd.
Those who are aware of cricket will find the post totally crazy.
And for us, the world consists of only these two kinds of people :).

Basic intent of this post is to popularize this variant of cricket named ‘Badla’, and to get some money stinking big-shot to buy our ground-breaking scheme so that we can earn millions of dollars as patent privileges. (Ahhh – A slight compromise– millions of ‘Rupees’ is also ok. No more negotiations please!)

History of the game

Well – It all started when Guru moved in with me and Aravind at our rented house in Bangalore around Jan 2005. It took some sincere compulsions and lot of big time ‘therivilis’ to make him shift with us from a dingy PG, but since we all closely knew each other for around 9 years he was quite apprehensive about the madness that’s going to follow. Anyway to cut the long story bermuda (aka short) Guru moved in with us. The first weekend itself, we declared the bigger bedroom in our house as ‘The Playground’. No one would sleep there, no furniture, bags etc would be allowed to be kept there. The biggest room in the house would be rendered for only one purpose – ‘The Playground’. We went around and bought a small size ‘MRF’ bat from roadside at a fair cost of 22000 Rs, with a tennis ball made with original gold feathers which we decided would be used only inside the house, so that we can keep the painted walls neat (Neat – gulp! – You should see it now!)












The Rules

There were no well-defined rules in the beginning. We started off with the usual indoor rule of direct hit on any walls being out, in addition to bowled and catch. Over-arm bowling was allowed, and that made batting even more difficult with the pace, bounce and movement that can be brought by that variation. Any shot hitting the walls after pitching the ground is rendered as a run. On due passage of time, the average winning score was found to be around 2-3 runs, with anything greater than 5 runs being a huge total. Scoring 10 runs has been declared as a century, and the batsman would raise the bat to the huge applause of the crowd watching the match. (If crowd is not there, bowler will applaud the batsman – mostly with swearings). Also, there is no LBW or hit wicket to ‘favor’ the batsman. There were some other rules like – If you wear specs, keep a spare ready since the ones that you are wearing can be broken at any time, If your blood group is rare, then please arrange for a bottle of extra blood before coming to the game etc etc.

The challenges

It won’t do any good if you are a fine cricketer on the cricket field. The concept of Badla is totally diverse. The challenges are very intense; chances of injuries are very likely, saving the proud face while returning is an unattainable solace. Bowling bouncers that hit right on the nose bridge is usually a source of inspiration for the bowler, almost everyone bowls bouncers to consciously injure the batsman and hence break the morale of the player. One lapse of concentration and you will either get an edge or have one banged on your nose pretty strong. The pace of the deliveries combined with the mix of spin/swing makes it thorny for even good players to survive. And another big challenge is for the close in fielders (again – the room is so small that everyone is close-in :)), to make sure that they don’t get hit in the face by the edgy shots. We have 2 pairs of broken specs, 3-4 instances of swollen eyes, blood oozing from the mouth etc as deterrents to the game. But still we play on – We enjoy the challenge - after all, we are real fighters!













The name of the game

How did the name ‘Badla’ evolve? I needed to think quite a bit into history to remember the rationale, and a smile braces me when I get the memories about that day. Guru was hell bent upon on winning the game, after a disastrous six months of 'Badla' – he used call himself by superhero names (Spiderman, for instance) for winning the tournaments, but nothing was working out. He saw a series name in ESPN, and declared that from that day onwards it’s the revenge time for him. He named the game for the day as ‘Badla’. After bowling every ball he turned himself back to the wall and shouted in a ‘Kroor Singh’ish way ‘Badlaaaaahhhhhhhhh’. Somehow those moments were too full of hilarity and wit which eventually made the name ‘Badla’ jammed to this game. It’s still going on every night, with me, Guru and Dhanush skirmishing it out with all our might, to earn the all vital distinction of becoming a champion. We still thrive for it and we pay hard with our time, our sweat and our blood!

The opening and closing ceremonies

The opening ritual of every match is marked with all of us shouting together ‘Badlaaahhh’ and throwing off our shirts to start off the game topless ;-). This is usually accompanied by the famous dialogues from Guru to the non-players at home (Now - PP and Aravind) ‘If you want to see Abhi and Dhanu with a smiling face – see it now. When they come back from the game, they would by crying with embarrassment of defeat and humiliation’. The closing ceremony of Badla is usually marked when someone slips, falls down on the ceramic tile floor and loses couple of teeth, after the floor gets completely wet with sweat. This is followed by a ‘Tang Refresher’ session when we prepare couple of big bottles of Tang that we devour in a flash while the one who has lost his teeth would be searching for the lost glory. Most of the times, even after the refresher session, we observe our eyes meeting again indicating that its time and everyone nods their heads in approval, and we walk back to ‘The Playground’. We are ready….And the cycle continues. (Couple of us have lost all of our teeth…We are growing them back by drinking Kamilari. And Eureka - its working!)

You can find more details about Badla in my dear friend Dhanush’s blog here. All the gorgeous caricatures and stunning sketches for this post were drawn by Guru and his friend Teju. Our sincere thanks to both of them!










Badla is not just a game for us. We cherish each and every moment that we spend for it and I am sure that it will adore our memories for times to come. Of course, it does not come easy. It needs you to have the zeal for waking from sleep at 2 am for the sake of the game. It mandates you to have a cold heart, coz you are going to have quite a bloodshed there. It’s a passion. It takes some grit and lots of mental strength to participate. No wonder ‘Indian Miscellaneous Games Association’ certified the game as ‘Adults Only’ because of offensive language and excessive use of violence. For facing this music, you are all welcome anytime to our abode!
Come, join the mighty combat!

Text Copyrighted © by Pophabhi & Dhanush ®
Images Copyrighted © by Guru & Teju ®