Box Cricket League | What Is Box Cricket? I Cricketfile

Box Cricket

Before we come to the box cricket league, we would like to talk about box cricket. What it is and how did it gain prominence. The reason behind the emergence of gully cricket and box cricket is almost the same. However, gully cricket managed to get immense popularity.

Lack of Space

While villages and small towns in India have lots of free space around and inside them, the same is not the case with mammoth metro cities like Mumbai or Delhi. While people might argue that there are parts of these cities that are quite well-developed and sprawling.

They aren’t part of this story. Cricket gained an immense amount of popularity after India won its first-ever ICC cricket world cup in 1983 when Kapil Dev led the team.

While aspiring cricketers and those playing it for fun in small towns or villages had no issues, those hailing from a middle-class background and living in crowded areas had to find a solution. That is when the concept of gully cricket emerged.

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The meaning of the word gully in Hindi is ‘street’ and as you might have guessed, the players and especially school-going children started to play in these narrow lanes.

While people may say that what about the car traffic, well the streets which we are referring to are too narrow for a car to enter. However, the issue was, that there were people who wanted to play the sport but they didn’t have such kind of a gully.

This is when they thought about playing the game in closed courtyard places. The word box in box cricket isn’t there to refer to an actual physical box. But rather it signifies a form of cricket that has a great number of restrictions for the batsmen for obvious reasons.

Box Cricket League (BCL)

So, coming to the main topic of discussion of this post, many of you might have guessed that some cricketers or amateur sportspersons might be involved but that isn’t the cases. Turns out that it is an entertainment show which uses the box cricket format. Box Cricket League (BCL) is an indoor cricket game where celebrities showcase their cricketing skills and entertain their fans.

League or TV Show?

And the people who play the matches are soap opera actors and actresses. To be honest, it hasn’t got to do anything related to promoting cricket as a sport. To date, 4 seasons have been played in the league and the first one started in 2014.

The TV show (as they call it) is produced by Ekta Kapoor of the Balaji Telefilms. However, cricket fans may object that why has the show been named as a league when it is a light-hearted entertainment soap opera.

Broadcasters

As for telecasting, it was telecasted by Sony TV in the 1^st edition, Colors TV in the 2^nd edition and MTV India in the 3^rd and 4^th edition. The main inspiration behind organising this show or league whatever you would like to call was gained from the 10 over Celebrity Cricket League.

Winners

If we talk about the winners of the different editions then Delhi Dragons won the debut and the second season. While the trophy in the third season went to the Lucknow Nawabs and surprisingly, Delhi Dragons again won the fourth season.

As you may have noticed, Delhi Dragons are the most successful team to date. The reader should note that we are referring to the Hindi version of the BCL. Allow us to tell you about other versions too.

Local Versions

These are the local versions that too were created for the audience from a specific state or region in India.

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