RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30103, 10 April 1963, Page 23

RANDOM REMINDER

THAT BACK CUT

“He played a Cambridge poke at a sneezer of an air-break and was out for a semibreve.” This statement is not transcribed from the wanderings of a disordered mind. At least, we don’t think it is. But it was born of a ramble in “The Language of Cricket” by W. J. Lewis, a dictionary of cricketing terms by an Oxford professor, published as recently as 1934. The investigation of the book arose from a correspondent who objected to radio commentators using the term “back cut”—a view we shared, because we felt there were cuts, square cuts and late cuts. But Mr Lewis tells us otherwise, we regret to say. He gives back cut as an alternative to late cut. But the minutes spent wandering through this work were' rewarding, and a reminder that cricket writing and broadcasting has become somewhat pedestrian.

There are many colourful terms which have quite unnecessarily, fallen out of favour and use. The Cambridge poke, it appears, was a leg-side stroke a sneezer an exceptionally well-bowled fast ball, an air-break was a swerve and a semi-breve was and is a duck, or nought zero, ballon, blob, cipher or spectacle. Some lovely terms could be re-introduced, with effect. Aunt Sally fits a corpulent, bespectacled wicket-keeper perfectly. Fag for fieldsman makes sense. To Slobber may not sound well, but it merely means to missfield. Chucker was familiar 30 years ago, as it is today; crump is an ideal word for describing a very hard hit and, interested as we are In all matters cricketical, Mr Lewis's word we like insinuator. for a slow, twisting ball. Pod for the blade of the bat has

a nice rural sound, and so does cob, for a gentle delivery.

A poppy pitch is distinctly alliterative and is almost onomatopaeic. There is a breath of Victorian plenty, and amateur daring, in “giving her the rush,” meaning to run down the pitch to attack. A buttery fieldsman appeals and it is not fair that Barter should be forgotten. A barter is a half-volley, named after Robert Speccott Barter, who, renowned for his half-volley hits entered Winchester College in 1803 and held the post of Warden from 1832 to 1881. We are relying on Mr Lewis for all this. There are many more delightful terms. But the one we liked best of all is used to describe that agonising business of having a ball strike fingers as they hold the bat. This—with Winchester College as its birth-place,—is a muttoner