{"id":404,"date":"2012-02-15T09:48:16","date_gmt":"2012-02-14T20:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=404"},"modified":"2012-02-15T11:35:22","modified_gmt":"2012-02-14T22:35:22","slug":"the-changing-language-of-cricket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=404","title":{"rendered":"The changing language of cricket"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of my earliest memories of TV is of watching an hour or so of a cricket match.\u00a0 I think the match may have been a test match between England and South Africa \u2013 although I can\u2019t be sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The picture was in soggy shades of grey, and the camerawork was extremely basic.\u00a0 But what really made an impression was not what I was seeing, but what I was hearing.\u00a0 It may have been the very first time that I heard a cricket commentary.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the detailed language of cricket, it is entirely possible (with the help of a good commentator or two) to watch a match with your eyes closed.\u00a0 If the bowler bowls a ball of a good length, just outside off stump, and the batsman manages to open the face and steer the ball down through the vacant third man position for another boundary, you know exactly what is going on.<\/p>\n

But, over the past few years, I\u2019ve noticed that the language of cricket is changing.<\/p>\n

The pitch<\/em> on which the game is played has become the wicket<\/em>.\u00a0 In modern parlance, the curator (who used to be the groundsman) is said to have prepared \u2018a first class wicket full of runs\u2019.\u00a0 (On occasion, this may also be described as a first class track.<\/em>) \u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, this use of wicket is not to be confused with the stumps<\/em> at either end of the wicket \u2013 which are also known as wickets \u2013 or the wickets<\/em> that bowlers take by participating in the dismissal of batsmen. \u00a0\u2018Roneel Hira picked up three wickets for just 19 runs.\u2019<\/p>\n

The batsman<\/em> (and it does always seem to be a batsman<\/em> \u2013 even when the batsman is a woman \u2013 is increasingly referred to as the batter<\/em>, perhaps to put him (or her) on an equal footing with the bowler<\/em>.<\/p>\n

If the bowler is a fast bowler, he (or she) is now often referred to simply as a quick<\/em> \u2013 pressing an adjective into service as a noun.\u00a0 While wide, another adjective, is pressed into service as a verb when umpires wide<\/em> a delivery which, in their view, is too far outside off stump to allow the batter to play \u2018a proper cricket shot\u2019.\u00a0 (It also seems to have become a convention, in all short forms of the game, to wide<\/em> all deliveries down the leg side.)<\/p>\n

A batsman who gently pushes the ball into a space in order to take a quick single is said to be nurdling<\/em>.\u00a0 This usage has been around for some time.\u00a0 But commentators do seem to have greatly increased the frequency of its use in recent times \u2013 perhaps because, in limited-overs matches in particular, batsmen (or batters) try to score off every single delivery.<\/p>\n

Happily, the names of the fielding positions (fine leg, square leg, midwicket, long on, etc) have remained largely intact.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve noticed that it is increasingly common to refer to a deep fielder who covers a broad section of the boundary as a sweeper<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I wonder what W G Grace would make of a modern cricket commentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my earliest memories of TV is of watching an hour or so of a cricket match.\u00a0 I think the match may have been a test match between England and South Africa \u2013 although I can\u2019t be sure.\u00a0 The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,8,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}