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Brian Lara: one of Teapot's many back garden scalps.
Brian Lara: one of Teapot's many back garden scalps. Photograph: Andy Clark/Reuters
Brian Lara: one of Teapot's many back garden scalps. Photograph: Andy Clark/Reuters

BC Lara c Valderrama b Teapot 48 and the great garden rulebooks

This article is more than 9 years old
Anyone who has ever battered an imaginary Curtly Ambrose bouncer into the stands with a baguette has done it – wherever cricket is played rules can be wrangled into shapes that work

In a rare moment of early morning clarity watching England take apart India in the recent Tri-Series ODI it suddenly struck home just how many rules and regulations are used to wrestle the format into the spectacle it is (or, at least, can be). The current ICC ODI match playing conditions, updated only last year, contain no fewer than 42 laws, each with a plethora of subsections. Then there’s the 10 appendices, detailing everything from “Zing wickets” to the camera layout for TV coverage (there’s also a couple of calculation sheets for determining the loss of overs during rain delays: A minus [C – (D + E)] divided by 4.2, for those who fancy a really fun afternoon).

It’s an enduring feature of a game which at first glance seems pretty rigid but is actually versatile enough to allow matches that last five days and end in a draw and games that last 20 overs and end in landslide victories. And it sent me on a bit of a journey down memory lane. Rule tinkering is an aspect of the game that goes far beyond the professional ranks – the sport is not simply malleable enough to give the professionals three distinct formats in which to excel and entertain but also gives wiggle room for practitioners who find themselves in what might otherwise have been impossible areas for a quick game of cricket.

Anyone who has ever turned their arm over with a shiny Granny Smith or battered an imaginary Curtly Ambrose bouncer into the stands with a baguette has found themselves in this position – a chance to play cricket, but with conditions that needed taming. It requires creativity. And when it works it can be a thing of beauty. Astonishingly (and rather pointlessly: I forget names of people I met yesterday but I retain this information) I can still remember the rules my younger brother and I had to abide by in the back garden more than 20 years ago.

We were lucky enough to have, beyond the onions in the vegetable patch, a rectangle of lawn perhaps 15 yards long and maybe eight wide. Straight down the middle we paced out a track that could be relied upon for tennis-ball bounce (admittedly largely because we used a tennis ball) that necessitated a set of “stumps” that consisted of a four-foot tall piece of plywood leaned up against a dustbin. The only boundary was straight back past the bowler, though you had to be careful not to overcook it into the greenhouse at mid off.

LBWs could only be given by the batsman (a slightly lop-sided rule looking back at it). Edges behind counted as long as they carried to the shed on the full. A flick into the hedge that ran along the leg side was out caught only if the ball stuck in the greenery. A stumpy old apple tree at short mid off with wild branches that whipped around at head height should have been a terrible hindrance, but instead became a source of tactical gamesmanship: a clever bunt past the trunk was the only opportunity for a batsman to run two, as the bowler would have to duck under the branches and then avoid the wasps before picking the ball up; hitting the trunk on the full, though, was out, caught. At some point, the branches meant the tree was dubbed Valderrama after the extravagantly-coiffed Carlos.

But the Colombia midfielder was far from the only big name involved. As is the wont of teenage boys of a certain temperament, every innings was diligently recorded in an exercise book perched nearby. Teams tended to be seven a side, (three bowlers, a wicketkeeper and three batsmen), had to be named before the start of play, and could be cribbed from the cream of the world and county game.

Selection was crucial. Left-handers in the order meant playing left-handed, which brought a disadvantage. The wicket of a particular favourite could be incredibly hard to claim (I still remember at least one double century scored by my brother when masquerading as Ajay Jadeja). And bowlers had to be deployed in the correct style. Andy Caddick would involve a pointy-elbowed approach; Darren Gough a ridiculously OTT leap into the crease; Allan Donald a run up that started by the house.

Problems occurred whenever our dad could be persuaded to bend his back for a couple of overs. The problem for the batsman was two close catching fielders, Valderrama on the off side, a (usually) far less reliable human on the on. The problem on the scoreboards was that the new bowler would refuse to play the role of any cricketer since 1970, invariably nominating himself Fred Trueman or picking a random object from the kitchen. This led to several destructive spells against the cream of the world’s early 90s international middle orders for Fiery Fred and the occasional frustratingly random “BC Lara c Valderrama b Teapot 48” in the books.

Yet it all worked. And wherever cricket is played rules can be wrangled into shapes that work. They won’t all be the same, and we might not necessarily agree with them all – I’ve never been entirely convinced by Ashdown Beach Cricket Law 23.7 which states that catches taken in the sea must be held above the water or else otherwise be considered dropped, while I’ve always seen the sense in the old childhood rule that while playing in a wide open space batsmen can only run a maximum of six no matter how far they cart the underarm bowling of someone’s toddling sibling.

But generally they work. Even in ODIs. If you have a garden, schoolyard, street or park rule of which you’re particularly fond then do share them below the line on the blog or send them to john.ashdown@theguardian.com and we’ll see if we can’t put together some sort of compendium for next week.

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