Continuing on our posts on irregular cricket (tennis ball cricket and street cricket), we explore a specialty of such games: In many games, only one batsman will be playing and there will not be any runner at the other end. The reason, of course, is the lack of enough players for a full-fledged game. But here is where the fun starts:

1. Although this may seem to reduce confusion caused by miscommunication between two batsmen, it creates more difficulties for the batsman for taking runs hit to an area behind the wicket. The batsman has to look backwards and then figure out if he should run. A runner would already have started down the pitch asking the batsman to go for a run.
2. All the fielders have to just look at one batsman to run out. It is much easier to figure out who to throw the ball to, as you can easily see if the batsman will make his ground. In most games, it is understood that you need to run out the batsman at the end that he is running to, but sometimes you are allowed to run out the batsman at either end. The latter can be confusing because it can be tricky to note when a wicket is broken at one end and what ground the batsman has covered at the other end.
3. Fielders do not need to change their fielding positions after each ball, like they would have to with different batsmen (especially a combination of left and right hand batsmen) at either end. Bowlers also have it simple. They don’t need to change bowling styles drastically.
4. The batsman gets more tired quickly as they have to face every ball, instead of being able to rotate the strike and relieve the pressure.

So, you thought batting on the streets was too easy. Well, as you can see from the above, it is not quite so simple!