Skip to content
Trickly
Start free
Go play

Gilli-Danda

Flick, strike and judge the distance.

Players
2 or more
Ages
8 and up
What you need
A long stick (danda) and a short tapered one (gilli)

Gilli-danda is old enough that many historians think it is the ancestor of cricket and baseball — the same idea of striking a small object with a stick and scoring by distance. It travelled from Indian villages across the world, changed its name everywhere it went, and came back unrecognisable. The original still needs only two pieces of wood.

How to play

  1. 1Scoop a small oval hole in the ground and rest the gilli across it.
  2. 2Use the danda to flick the gilli up into the air.
  3. 3While it is airborne, hit it as far as you can with the danda.
  4. 4Fielders try to catch it. A clean catch puts you out.
  5. 5If nobody catches it, measure the distance from the hole to where it landed using the danda's length — that is your score.

Good for the body

Striking a small moving object trains hand-eye coordination better than almost any other street game, and the swing works the shoulders and wrists.

Good for the brain

Measuring the distance in stick-lengths is estimation and multiplication happening in the real world. A child who scores a game of gilli-danda has done twenty measurement sums and enjoyed every one.

A note for parents

Estimating distance in stick-lengths is real measurement practice, and the hand-eye timing needed to strike a small object in mid-air is genuinely difficult. Play in an open space, well away from windows and people.

Played today?

30 min

Ask a parent before going outdoors.