{"id":18323,"date":"2021-04-19T12:37:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T19:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/?p=18323"},"modified":"2021-04-19T12:37:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T19:37:46","slug":"wickets-and-outs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2021\/04\/19\/wickets-and-outs\/","title":{"rendered":"wickets and outs"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The introduction of the new form of cricket called The Hundred<\/i> was delayed by the pandemic\u2014which has given the organization time to think about its language. Cricket, like any sport, has a language of its own which can be confusing to people unfamiliar with it. It seems almost designed to bewilder not just the foreigner but the casual listener\u2014and the minds behind the Hundred want to expand their market share.\r\n

Thus the recent story that Wickets could be called \u2018outs\u2019<\/a>.\r\n

This may get confusing, so hold on to your hats.\r\n

The targets that the bowler is trying to knock down and the batter is trying to defend are two small objects called bails<\/strong>, which rest on three vertical posts called stumps<\/strong>. The whole apparatus of two bails and three stumps is called a wicket<\/strong>. If the bail is knocked off the stump, then the batter is out<\/strong>. This is all perfectly traditional language. There are a variety of other ways for a batter to be out<\/strong>, however. I will not detail them all, but I will say that if the bail is knocked down by the bowled ball, the batter is said to have been stumped<\/strong>, as differentiated from caught<\/strong> or run out<\/strong>. In any case, a batter usually bats until he or she is out<\/strong>, from whatever method\u2014and when a batter is out<\/strong> the bowler is said to have taken his or her wicket<\/strong>.\r\n

The wicket, then, stands (as it were) for the batter\u2019s opportunity to keep batting (a batter who is still batting is said to be not out<\/strong>). A team that has had four of their batsmen out is said to have lost four wickets (and have six wickets in hand); a bowler may be said to take three wickets<\/strong>. The terms are not generally used interchangeably\u2014I have never heard or read that a team has six outs remaining, or that a bowler has taken (or got) three outs. But a team would be all out for 264<\/strong>, and never all wickets taken for 264<\/strong>. It\u2019s the sort of thing that would grate on the ear of someone accustomed to the game, like calling baseball runs points<\/strong>, or gridiron touchdowns goals<\/strong>.\r\n

So the organization is suggesting the possibility of encouraging their broadcaster to stop using wicket<\/strong> in both of those senses, and use the out<\/strong> formulation\u2014which already means out<\/strong>!\u2014whenever referring to wickets in that sense. That would mean that wicket<\/strong> would only refer to the object itself, or perhaps as a kind of synecdoche for the playing field, which is a third fairly-frequent usage.\r\n

This attempt to simplify the traditional language of the game is upsetting the usual suspects, and seems to me very unlikely to survive past the first wicket of the first game. Still, I understand the idea behind it, and think it\u2019s probably perfectly wise for a sport to think about ways to describe the game to new listeners or watchers. I still don\u2019t have a real sense of where all the defensive positions (Wicket Keeper, First Slip, Second Slip, Third Slip, Fly Slip, Long Stop, Third man, Gully, Deep Gully, Silly Point, Point, Deep Point, Cover Sweeper, Cover Point, Extra Cover, Deep Extra Cover, Silly Mid Off, Mid Off, Long Off, Straight Hit, Silly Mid On, Mid On, Long On, Forward Short Leg, Short Mid Wicket, Mid Wicket, Deep Mid Wicket, Sweeper, Short Square Leg, Square Leg, Deep Square Leg, Leg Gully, Long Leg, Leg Slip, Short Fine Leg, and Deep Fine Leg) are located on the field.\r\n

Also interesting to me\u2014the other advice that The Hundred is considering giving to broadcasters is to replace batsman<\/strong> with batter<\/strong> as the standard description, and I\u2019m delighted to say that everywhere I personally read about cricket this has come as a completely uncontroversial and sensible correction to an outdated usage.\r\n

Thanks,
-Ed.\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language changes, and sometimes doesn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,49,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-change","category-jargon-terminology","category-usage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18323"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18328,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18323\/revisions\/18328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}