Sideline survival
Cricket words,
in plain English
Cricket has an unusually large vocabulary and almost none of it is guessable. Here is what the parents around you are actually saying — starting with the word that means three different things.
The worst offender
"Wicket" means
three things
Nothing confuses a new parent faster. The same word covers the equipment, the event and the ground itself, and cricketers switch between them without noticing.
You work out which is meant from context, and after a few weeks you stop thinking about it at all.
- 1. The three sticks
- The stumps the batter stands in front of, with two small bails balanced on top. "He hit the wicket" means the ball struck the stumps.
- 2. A batter being out
- "We took three wickets" means three batters were dismissed. A bowler's figures are counted in wickets taken.
- 3. The strip in the middle
- The prepared surface between the two sets of stumps, also called the pitch. "A good wicket" is a comment on the surface, not on anybody's batting.
The shape of a game
The basics
Over
Six legal deliveries from one bowler. Then a different bowler bowls the next one from the opposite end.
Innings
One team's turn at batting. Note the "s" — it is there even for a single innings.
Crease
The lines marked at each end. A batter is safe from a run out once any part of them or the bat is grounded behind it.
Strike
The batter facing the bowling is "on strike". The other one is the non-striker, waiting at the far end.
Maiden
An over in which the bowler concedes no runs. Harder than it sounds, and a genuine compliment.
Boundary
The rope around the edge. Reach it along the ground for four runs, clear it without bouncing for six.
Ways of going out
How a batter's
turn ends
There are ten ways to be out in the laws of cricket. In youth cricket you will see five of them, and mostly the first three.
Bowled
The ball hits the stumps and the bails come off. The cleanest dismissal there is, and nobody argues with it.
Caught
A fielder catches the ball before it bounces. The most common way out at every level.
Run out
The fielders break the stumps while a batter is out of their crease mid-run. Usually a mix-up between the two batters.
LBW
Leg before wicket. The ball hits the batter's leg and the umpire judges it would have gone on to hit the stumps. There are conditions, and it causes more arguments than everything else combined.
Stumped
The batter steps out to hit the ball, misses, and the wicketkeeper breaks the stumps before they get back.
Duck
Not a dismissal but you will hear it: out without scoring. First ball is a "golden duck". Everyone gets one eventually.
Runs nobody hit
Extras
Cricket awards runs for mistakes as well as for shots. These go to the team total without being credited to any batter, which is why the scorebook rarely adds up the way you expect.
In youth cricket extras can be a surprisingly large share of a total, which is one reason coaches spend so much time on accuracy.
-
Wide
A delivery too far from the batter to play a normal shot. One run to the batting side, and the ball is bowled again.
-
No-ball
An illegal delivery, most often because the bowler's front foot landed past the line. A run, and the ball is bowled again.
-
Bye
The ball passes the batter untouched, goes past the keeper, and the batters run anyway.
-
Leg bye
The ball hits the batter's body rather than the bat, and they run. Counts to the team, not to them.
Who does what
The people
on the field
Wicketkeeper
Crouches behind the stumps in gloves and pads. Cricket's catcher, and the only fielder allowed gloves.
Opener
One of the two batters who start the innings, against the newest and hardest ball.
All-rounder
A player good enough to be picked for both batting and bowling. Every coach wants more of them.
Pace and spin
The two families of bowling. Pace bowlers run in and bowl fast; spinners bowl slowly and turn the ball sideways off the pitch.
Slip
A fielder standing close behind the batter, beside the keeper, waiting for a thin edge.
The tail
The last few in the batting order, usually the specialist bowlers. Expectations are low and celebrations are loud.
Fielding positions have some of the strangest names in sport — gully, silly point, fine leg, cover, mid-on. None of them need learning to follow a game. Ask a coach at a session and they will happily point them out.
Sideline questions
Things people
quietly wonder
Why is it "innings" and not "inning"? +
Cricket uses the plural form for both singular and plural, so a team has "an innings" and both teams have "two innings". Baseball dropped the s. It is the sort of difference that makes each sport sound wrong to the other.
What do the two numbers in a score mean? +
"84 for 3" means 84 runs scored and 3 batters out. The second number is how many wickets have fallen, so a low second number is good news for the batting side. Australians say it the other way round, which is its own small chaos.
Why does everyone shout when nothing happened? +
That is an appeal. Some dismissals, LBW in particular, need the fielding side to ask the umpire before a decision is given. The shout of "howzat" is a genuine question, however little it sounds like one.
Do I need to know any of this to watch my child? +
Not really. Cheer when the ball goes to the boundary and when the stumps get knocked over, and you will be right most of the time. The rest arrives on its own across a season of standing on the sideline.
Learn it from the sideline
The fastest way to pick up cricket is to stand and watch a session. Come along, ask questions, and nobody will mind that you are starting from nothing.