Cricket Slang: A Field Guide for the Uninitiated
Cricket is a game that has had several hundred years to develop its vocabulary, and it has used every one of them. No other sport has produced a language so rich, so bewildering, and so apparently designed to confuse newcomers. A person can be out hit wicket, caught at silly point off a googly, having misjudged a full toss on a sticky wicket. This is not nonsense. This is cricket. And if you are going to stand at the boundary with any authority, you will need to understand what is being said around you.
What follows is a guide. It is not exhaustive (that would require several volumes and a small grant), but it covers the essentials: the deliveries, the positions, the shots, the dismissals, and the conditions. Enough to hold your own at the bar during the tea interval, and more than enough to know when to nod sagely at the television.
"Cricket is the only sport where the terminology is more complex than the laws, and the laws are already incomprehensible."
The deliveries
Jaffa:The perfect delivery. Unplayable, unanswerable, and named (most likely) after the Jaffa orange, the finest of its kind. At the grove, the word carries additional meaning. See also: the reason this brand exists.
Yorker:A delivery that pitches right at the batsman's feet, in the narrow gap between bat and boot. When bowled well, it is almost impossible to play. When bowled badly, it becomes a full toss. The margin between brilliance and embarrassment is approximately six inches.
Full toss:A delivery that reaches the batsman without bouncing. Generally considered a gift, unless it is very fast, in which case it is considered dangerous. Either way, the bowler did not intend it.
Bouncer:A short delivery that rises sharply towards the batsman's upper body or head. Designed to intimidate. Sometimes succeeds. The batsman's options are to duck, to sway, or to hook it for six and pretend they meant to all along.
Beamer:A full toss that arrives at head height. Not allowed. The bowler will apologise. The batsman will not believe them.
Googly:A leg spinner's secret weapon. It looks like a leg break (turning from right to left) but actually turns the other way. Named, according to legend, for the wide-eyed expression of the batsman who first encountered one. The doosra is its off-spin equivalent, and the word means "the other one" in Urdu, which tells you everything about the delivery's purpose.
Doosra:The off-spinner's googly. Turns away from the right-handed batsman instead of into them. Invented (or at least perfected) by Saqlain Mushtaq. Saying "doosra" at the cricket will earn you an approving nod from anyone within earshot.
The fielding positions
Silly mid-on, silly mid-off, silly point:Fielding positions absurdly close to the batsman. The "silly" prefix is not editorial; it is the official term, and it has been in use since the nineteenth century. The fielder stands close enough to read the maker's name on the bat, and wears a helmet for reasons that should be obvious.
Slips:A cordon of fielders standing behind the batsman on the off side. First slip, second slip, third slip, and so on. Named because they catch the balls that slip off the edge of the bat. Standing in the slips requires excellent reflexes and a willingness to spend long periods doing absolutely nothing before suddenly having to do everything.
Gully:The fielding position between the slips and point. Nobody is entirely sure why it is called gully, though it may relate to the narrow channel the ball travels through to reach that region. The gully fielder tends to have a slightly haunted expression.
Fine leg, square leg, mid-wicket, mid-on, mid-off, cover, point, third man:The remaining positions form an elaborate constellation around the pitch. Each has a precise location, a specific purpose, and a name that would make absolutely no sense in any other context. "Third man" has nothing to do with Orson Welles, though the fielder often feels equally alone.
The shots
Cover drive:The most aesthetically pleasing shot in cricket. Played with the front foot forward and the bat swinging through a graceful arc towards the cover boundary. When executed properly, it makes a sound that is difficult to describe but impossible to forget. At the grove, we consider it the batting equivalent of a jaffa: perfect in conception and execution.
Pull:A shot played to a short delivery, hitting the ball square on the leg side. Requires timing, courage, and a certain disregard for personal safety if the ball is quick.
Reverse sweep:A shot played by switching the hands on the bat and sweeping the ball behind square on the off side. Considered radical when first played, now merely audacious. Purists still disapprove, which is part of its charm.
Slog:A shot played with more enthusiasm than technique. The batsman aims to hit the ball as far as possible, ideally over the boundary, and hopes for the best. Distinguished from a drive by the absence of any discernible footwork and the presence of a wild grin.
"The cover drive is a conversation. The slog is shouting across a crowded room. Both have their place."
The dismissals
Bowled:The most definitive dismissal. The ball hits the stumps, the bails come off, and there is no room for debate. The batsman walks, and the bowler celebrates. At the grove, when a particularly fine orange falls from the tree of its own accord, the Head Grower says it has been bowled.
Caught:The ball comes off the bat (or glove) and is caught by a fielder before it hits the ground. The most common form of dismissal, and the source of approximately 40% of all cricket arguments, most of which concern whether the ball actually carried.
LBW (Leg Before Wicket):The ball hits the batsman's pad when it would otherwise have hit the stumps. In theory, straightforward. In practice, the source of more controversy than any other law in sport. The umpire must judge the line, the trajectory, and whether the batsman was playing a shot, all in approximately half a second.
Run out:The batsman fails to make their ground before the fielding side breaks the stumps. Usually involves a desperate dive, a direct hit, and a slow-motion replay that is watched seventeen times by everyone in the ground.
Stumped:The batsman leaves their crease while playing a shot and the wicketkeeper removes the bails. The batsman is, in essence, caught wandering. It is the cricketing equivalent of being found somewhere you should not be.
Hit wicket:The batsman accidentally dislodges their own bails, usually by stepping back onto the stumps. The most embarrassing form of dismissal. The batsman walks off knowing that they were, in the most literal sense, their own worst enemy.
The conditions
Sticky wicket:A pitch that has been affected by rain and then dried by sun, causing the ball to behave erratically. Now largely a thing of the past (covered pitches saw to that), but the phrase has entered the English language as a metaphor for any difficult situation. At the grove, we use it to describe the soil after an April shower.
Swing:The lateral movement of the ball through the air. Conventional swing moves the ball in the direction of the shiny side. Reverse swing moves it the other way, usually when the ball is old and roughed up. Both are legal. The methods used to achieve them are occasionally less so.
Seam:The raised stitching that runs around the middle of a cricket ball, and the movement that results when the ball lands on it. At Absolute Jaffa, the seam is sacred. Our fruit has one too, and it runs from pole to pole, just as it does on the ball.
Turn:The lateral movement of the ball off the pitch, produced by a spin bowler. When a pitch offers turn, it means the ball is gripping the surface and deviating. On the final day of a Test match, on a dry, crumbling pitch, turn is what separates the great spinners from the merely good.
Green top:A pitch with a covering of green grass, which typically helps fast bowlers by providing extra seam movement and bounce. Captains who win the toss on a green top will bowl first and then spend the rest of the day looking quietly satisfied with themselves.
Road:A flat, lifeless pitch that offers nothing to the bowlers. The ball comes on to the bat at a comfortable pace and does nothing interesting. Batsmen love roads. Bowlers describe them with words that cannot be printed in a family journal.
At the grove
The language of the grove borrows freely from the language of the game. When the Head Grower says the fruit is "turning," he may be talking about spin, or he may be talking about ripeness. When the Groundsman describes the conditions as "green," he is not discussing the pitch; he is describing the orchard in April. And when anyone at Absolute Jaffa says that something is "unplayable," they mean it in the highest possible sense: too good to be countered, too perfect to be improved upon.
Cricket's vocabulary is absurd, beautiful, and entirely logical once you understand it. Rather like cricket itself. And rather like the fruit that grows in the grove, which is red on the outside, citrus on the inside, and makes a sound when it falls from the tree that the Head Grower insists is identical to leather on willow.
He may be right. Stranger things have happened in this game.