Bear with me, but before we get to the meat of this post, I need to explain a little bit about cricket for those of my readers who think that cricket is some kind of insect, albeit a big, scary one, that you definitely wouldn’t want to find on your knee. This one can be up to four inches long…..
Cricket can be a very complicated sport but most people can recognise the two wickets, one at either end of the pitch.
Then there are two “batsmen”, one of whom, Batsman A, tries to hit the ball as far as possible when it is bowled at his wicket.
The other batsman, B, stands at the other end of the pitch and awaits developments. By coincidence, he is near where the “bowler” bowls from.
If Batsman A hits the ball a long way, then both batsmen, both A and B, may then decide to run as fast as they can to the wicket at the other end. Every time they do this, they exchange their original positions and their team scores one “run”. The batsmen here are wearing yellow helmets……
The two batsmen’s immediate opponents are the bowler who bowls the ball, subject to a rather long list of rules, and the wicketkeeper. Any ball hit by Batsman A is eventually returned to the bowler so he can have another go. By that point, more or less, the batsmen will have stopped running. Here’s the bowler bowling, and Batsman B waiting for Batsman A at the other end to hit the ball to the moon so that they can run 10,000 times.
Now comes the complicated bit.
Batsman A is trying to defend his wicket against the bowler, who bowls the ball from a position level with the opposite wicket. Batsman B is standing nearby (picture above).
Batsman A, at the other end, will try to hit the ball as far as possible.
The bowler, though, is trying to dismiss Batsman A so that he will have to return to the dressing room and cannot bat any more. The most obvious way for the bowler to do this is to hit the wicket and to knock at least some of it over. And then the batsman is “out” ! :
And now, the wicketkeeper. He is on the same side as the bowler, and his primary job is to stop any balls bowled by the bowler and then missed by Batsman A. If he doesn’t stop the ball, the batsmen can run, just as if Batsman A had hit it:
The wicketkeeper also has another job to do. If Batsman A hits the ball, but only nicks it, then wicketkeeper can catch it as it whizzes past at high speed, and Batsman A will be “out”, dismissed from the game, provided that the ball doesn’t touch the ground.
Indeed, this same rule applies to all the members of the bowling side. If Batsman A is a fool, he will hit the ball in the air and then when any opponent catches it before it touches the ground, it’s “Goodnight, Vienna” for him. This way of being, literally, “caught out” is the commonest way to be dismissed for a batsman:
Extremely common too is the situation mentioned above where Batsman A just nicks the ball as it passes him, and the wicketkeeper then catches it. The reason is that the ball may well be travelling extremely fast when Batsman A nicks it…perhaps 80 or 90 mph in top class cricket. If a team has a very good fast bowler, then the bowling team’s main tactic will be to get the batsman to nick the ball and then have the wicketkeeper catch it.
In the 1970s, the Australians’ main bowler was Dennis Lillee, and he bowled extremely fast, and with any luck, his colleague, Rodney Marsh, the Australian wicketkeeper, would catch the ball when it was nicked by the terrified Batsman A.
Here’s Dennis Lillee, my favourite ever bowler:
And here’s Rodney Marsh, who died recently, in March 2022. Dennis Lillee is also in the picture:
In the scorebook, that particular dismissal of the batsman would be recorded as:
Batsman A caught Marsh bowled Lillee 0
In the more usual abbreviated form…..
Batsman A c Marsh b Lillee 0
Those five words soon became the most frequent means of dismissal in the history of international cricket, with more than 200 occurrences. Here’s just one of them:
Lillee is on the right, Marsh is flying, and the English batsman is Tony Greig.
And here’s another. Lillee is on the left, flying, Marsh is on the extreme right and the English batsman is doomed.
Be patient. This blog post is definitely leading somewhere. On a journey. A journey that takes in a world famous cricket ground. An author with a household name. And a demolished pub about a mile away from where I am sitting right now. Just bear with me.
In the meantime, here’s that pub, just before the demolition men got to it:
And here it is now;
It was a great pity to lose a real Victorian pub, even if social housing replaces it.
John Knifton 
Surely the finest team sport in the World.
Yes, it may well be! It is certainly our national summer sport, and arguably, one of the greatest legacies of the British Empire.
And most of the World.
Yes, there are some pretty argumentative people who seem to like cricket !
I’m please you cleared that up 🙂
I once explained cricket to 45 French youngsters of 11-14 and they all appeared to understand the game, so we went outside to play.
The bowler bowled, the batsman hit it and then ran in a huge circle just inside the boundary. It was in vain. The fielders all chased him and wrestled him to the ground as if it was a rugby game.
Nothing is clear in cricket, I afraid, if you don’t have any background in the game.
In any case, I did say “Bear with me” and you will see when we get there that this post is more about literature and the Victorian era as much as trying to do the impossible by explaining cricket to somebody who knows nothing of the game.
You probably know I am a great fan who played until I was 45
I certainly do, Derrick. The French boys in question came from Rodez, in south-central France. Most of them, though, seem to have given up both cricket and rugby faily quickly. I think that the riugby they played was “le jeu a treize” (League) but I’m not sure.
As a fan of Sherlock Holmes, I’m intrigued to learn of his connection with a world famous cricket ground 🙂
And so you shall ! Only not quite yet !
I never really understood the game – thanks for the explanation.
To be honest, I was hoping that all of my American friends would be able to understand a lot about cricket given their knowledge of baseball.
And nobody I knew of was of a nationality who would stand no chance of understanding it, such as the French or the Spanish, who don’t seem to play any sports akin to cricket.
Once I started to read your explanation, I thought, sounds a lot like baseball.
I have to confess that to me the game of cricket always was, and remains, a Holy Mystery. When the television commentator says, “England went down to an innings defeat”, he might as well be speaking Mandarin Chinese. And I have not the least idea where to find mid-off, short leg or square leg, even less deep cover – which sounds like the title of a spy thriller. 🙂
Don’t worry, Chris. Not every Englishman was born to understand cricket. All you need to do is to follow the argument in the next thrilling instalment, and to try to make the connections between a world famous cricket ground, an author with a household name and a demolished pub.
I’m not a great fan of cricket I must admit, but I have played it (at school) with limited success. A shame the pub has gone but I guess if it’s not used it goes, the way of the world sadly.
That is absolutely true, although I do feel that it was a pity that a genuine Victorian pub should be demolished without so much as a by-your-leave. Furthermore, it was a pub with a very strong connection with an important figure in Nottinghamshire cricket and football;. All will be revealed in the nect couple of blogposts!
I’m intrigued!
Yes, it all comes from a bit of original research I’ve been doing, so be patient!