Learn about the sport of CRICKET: rules, vocabulary, culture, and more!

Hello.

I'm Gill from engVid, and today's lesson is on the subject of cricket; the game of cricket,

which is a very English sport.

And you might be thinking: "Well, how is this useful for me?

I'm trying to learn English."

So, it's useful to you for the vocabulary; the words connected with cricket.

You might find it useful, for example, to watch a cricket match on television and listen

to the commentary, and see if you can follow it, if you recognize some of these words appearing.

It's usually at a... quite a... the commentary is quite quick, so it's a good test for you

to see if you can follow it and hear all the particular words.

And apart from the vocabulary itself and having some practice at listening, if you listen

to a commentary, some of the cricket terms are used in idioms and metaphors in everyday

life, even by people who don't really know they're connected with cricket.

So, we'll be looking at those later in the lesson.

In the second part of the lesson we'll be looking at eleven idioms/metaphors connected

with cricket, so this should all be useful to you in your... expanding your English vocabulary.

So, here we go.

And it's also of cultural interest, of course, to see what strange sports English people

play, and also some other countries who play cricket as well.

So, let's have a look.

So, it's a very English sport; traditionally it's English.

There's a picture of a bat; cricket bat, and the cricket ball, there.

So, basically, like with a lot of sports, you have a "team" of players - the members

of the cricket team are called "players", and each team has eleven players.

Okay?

And there's a "captain" who's the person in charge of the team; the captain.

Okay.

The place where the game is played is called a "cricket ground", so it's a big open space

with grass; and, of course, room for people to sit and watch.

In the middle of the big open space is a smaller area called the "pitch", which is a long,

narrow piece, like that, piece of grass; long, narrow piece of grass called the "pitch".

And this is where... people have to run backwards and forwards on the pitch sometimes.

I'll explain that in a minute.

There's the pitch, and at both ends of the pitch is something called a "wicket".

I think I better draw a wicket as well.

That's a wicket.

So, the wicket is made up of three sticks that go into the ground; they're wooden - they're

called "stumps".

So, three stumps go into the ground.

And two...

Two little pieces of wood sit on top - those are called "bails" on top.

So, the point of the wicket is that if somebody throws the ball or bowls the ball at the person

with the bat, if the ball hits the wicket and the bails fall off, that batsman is finished;

he can't continue playing and somebody has to come and replace him.

So, that's part of the game.

So, at the end of the pitch in both places you have the wicket.

Okay.

So, then you have the "bat", which the "batsman" uses, which is made of a wood from a willow;

willow tree, so it's quite hard.

There's a "ball", which is covered in red leather, traditionally.

Okay.

There are two "batsmen"; one at each end of the pitch.

There's a "bowler" who belongs in the other team, who throws the ball like this, bowls

the ball at the batsman, and the batsman has to hit the ball.

So, it's a little bit like American baseball; that sort of idea, but not... the details

are different.

Okay.

"Bowler", and you'll also have "fielders" - these are people also from the same team

as the bowler who are standing around the field.

Some are close to the pitch, some are further away, but they're all waiting to see what

happens when the batsman hits the ball because they have to run after that ball and get it

back as quickly as possible.

If they don't get the ball back, the two batsmen can run backwards and forwards on the pitch,

scoring points, which are called "runs".

So, they want to try to stop them scoring too many points, so they get the ball back

as quickly as possible.

Okay.

So, the "pavilion" is the sort of building at the edge of the... of the cricket ground

where the cricket players go into and come out of.

When they're ready to play, they come out of the pavilion.

When... when maybe they've been knocked out, they go back into the pavilion, so that's...

the pavilion is quite important.

So, when the batsmen are batting, they are "in", so that's called an "innings".

So, the length of time they can stay in and score points or runs is called an "innings".

And then if they're sort of knocked out, then they go...

They may have scored 60...

60 runs and that was their innings.

Okay.

If they're "out", if they make a mistake, if the wicket is hit by the ball or other

ways of getting them out, then they're out; they're finished - they have to go back to

the pavilion.

Okay?

They can be "bowled out" by the ball hitting the wicket.

They can be "caught out".

If they hit the ball and it goes up into the air, and one of the fielders catches the ball

before it hits the ground, then they've been caught out.

If the ball hits the ground first, then they're still okay.

But if they catch the ball and it hasn't yet hit the ground, they have been caught out.

Okay.

There's also a thing called "LBW", which stands for "leg before wicket".

I don't fully understand that rule, but sometimes some batsmen can be out because they've put

their leg in front of the wicket when they shouldn't have, so that's another thing you

might hear being mentioned.

Okay.

So, then there's a thing called an "over".

This is when the bowler throws six balls...

So, you have to have six balls bowled to count as an over, so everything's divided up into

sections like that, so that's an "over".

A "run" is when either the batsmen run from one end of the pitch to the other, or when

they've hit the ball.

They can score four runs if they hit the ball, and it goes right to the end of the field

and over a boundary without anybody being able to catch it.

If it rolls over the boundary, they've scored four runs.

They can score six runs.

If they do that and the ball goes up into the air and it doesn't touch the ground before

it reaches the boundary...

If it goes...

Sometimes it goes into the crowd of spectators; it might hit somebody, but if it stays up

in the air then they've hit a six.

Okay?

So, they're just sort of clocking up runs that way, or actually literally running up

and down the pitch.

Okay, so the points that they're earning, the runs are called the "score".

And usually somewhere in the cricket ground at the side somewhere, where everyone can

see, is a "scoreboard" - a big board with lots of numbers on.

This is a small version of a scoreboard.

Some of them are electronic and they have a lot more information on them, but they show

how many runs have been scored up to that point in the game; how many wickets, meaning

how many wickets have been lost and batsmen are out because of it; how many overs - that

means how many bowlings times six the bowler has done.

So, you have to multiply 15 by 6 to work out: How many times has the bowler bowled the ball?

First innings - if there's been a previous innings, and you can have more than one innings,

so a team might have clocked up 328 runs in a first innings, but now this is probably

into the second innings and there's some more runs being scored.

Okay.

So, that's that.

So, I mentioned the "crowd", the "spectators" - the people watching.

Also, sometimes...

Cricket is the kind of game which you can't play if it's raining.

It's not like football and rugby where you can play in the rain or the snow sometimes.

If it's raining you have to stop with cricket, so they have this phrase: "Rain stopped play"

if there's been a cricket match going on and then in the middle of the afternoon they stop,

and they say: "Rain stopped play".

They had to stop because of the weather.

Or sometimes they decide that the light isn't good enough.

If it's very cloudy and grey, if the sky is grey, they don't have enough light to see

what they're doing well enough to hit the ball, so sometimes "bad light stopped play".

I think that's possibly quite a controversial issue because sometimes people think: "We

could have carried on, then.

It wasn't such a big problem.

We could have carried on playing."

But the authority...

People in authority decided: "No, we'll stop now."

So, not everybody agrees on when to stop.

So, okay, there are lots of cricket grounds all over the UK.

London has two at least, but two famous ones are the "Oval" in South London and "Lord's

Cricket Ground" in Northwest London, and those are where the big sort of international matches

are played, as well as county matches.

So, just to explain "county": The UK is divided up into counties, and each county has its

own cricket team.

So, "Yorkshire" is a county, "Surrey" is a county, "Kent", "Somerset" - there are lots

of counties, and they all have a cricket team.

And also, there are national teams; England is a national cricket team.

And then because of sort of historical reasons when, you know, the form of British Empire,

cricket became popular in former empire countries, former colonies which are now often still

part of the Commonwealth, but there's no empire anymore.

But they still play cricket.

So, the West Indies, Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and often those are called the

"test match" - the sort of the top international type of cricket match that can go on for several

days.

It's quite a slow game; you might start watching and thinking: "Oh, nothing much is happening."

It's not as fast as football or rugby; it's quite sort of leisurely in a way.

So, that's an overview of the vocabulary, and roughly...

I'm not an expert, but roughly how the game is played, and how runs are scored.

And then once both teams have had an opportunity to play to be batting, they then see who...

Who got the most runs, and whoever got the most runs wins the match.

So, that's a rough summary of the game of cricket, and we'll now have a look at some

of the idioms and metaphors that come from it, which are used a lot in everyday life.

Okay, so let's have a look at some idioms that are connected with cricket; and appropriately,

we have eleven.

There are eleven players in the team, and we have eleven idioms.

So, let's look at the first one.

So: "To bowl a googly" - nothing to do with Google, but bowling, when you bowl the ball...

If you bowl a googly in cricket, the bowler has sort of made the ball spin in some sort

of way so that when the batsman hits the ball, it goes off in an unexpected direction; so

it takes the batsman by surprise.

So, if you bowl someone a googly, you say something or do something unexpected, and

you take them by surprise.

Okay.

So, that can happen in any...

Any context.

So, okay.

So, the next one, if someone says: "We're on a sticky wicket, here", this is the wicket;

the sticks that are in the ground.

The cricket ground is grass, so if it has been raining and the ground is wet, it can

be a bit sticky; a bit muddy.

So, it's not...

It's not a very good surface to play cricket.

So, if you're on a sticky wicket, it's more difficult to play.

So, if...

If you're meeting someone for the first time and you can't quite get onto the same wavelength,

you can't find anything in common with them and you're finding it difficult to have a

conversation, you could say: "Well, I think I'm on a sticky wicket with this person.

I don't really know what to talk to them about."

Or, again, in any other situation that's difficult: "You're on a sticky wicket."

Okay.

If someone says: "He's had a good innings", in cricket terms, that's when the batsman

is in for a long time, scoring lots of runs and hopefully...

They try to get more than 100.

If they get 100, it's called a "century", just like 100 years is called a century.

"To have a good innings" means you've had a really good, long time doing something.

Either you might have worked for the same company for 20 or 30 years, so you could call

that a good innings.

It's even used for people when they get older, if they live to be in their 80s or 90s, they've

had a really long life - you can say about them: "He's...

He or she has had a good innings", meaning they've had a really long life; an opportunity

to do lots of things in the length of time that they've lived.

Okay.

"To hit someone for six", as I explained earlier, if you hit the ball as the batsman and it

goes up into the air, and it lands in the crowd - you automatically score six runs without

even having to do any running.

So, "a hit for six" is a really good thing because you get six points in one action.

If you hit someone for six, metaphorically, you give them a big surprise.

So, it's a kind of unexpected surprise, really.

"I was hit for six when someone gave me a car for a birthday present, and that hit me

for six."

It was a very unusual thing to happen, so that sort of thing.

Okay.

And similarly, you can be "bowled over" if you're taken by surprise, again.

"I was bowled over when somebody gave me this car for my birthday.

I was bowled over", not literally; I didn't fall over literally, but I was really surprised,

so that's a similar idea.

"To field a question" - often politicians have to do this.

They may have given a speech, and then there may be journalists or members of the public

in the audience who are then given the opportunity to ask questions, and the politician has to

take the questions and reply to them in some way.

So, you remember the "fielding" in cricket is the people who are standing out beyond

the pitch, waiting to see where the ball goes.

So, if the ball goes in their direction, they run after it and get it back to the bowler

as quickly as possible.

So, it's the kind of thing that you do to keep things moving.

So: "To field a question", the politician has to hear the question and respond to it,

so they are fielding the questions.

Okay.

Also, if the politician is asked a question which they can't think of an answer to, they

could be "stumped" meaning they just don't know what to say.

If you're stumped...

These are the stumps of the wicket; these upright, three sticks.

And if you're stumped, that's when the ball hits the wicket and the batsman is out.

So, it's a sort of...

You're defeated by it; you've lost.

You've lost your position.

So, if someone is stumped when you ask them a question, they don't know how to respond;

they don't know how to reply.

You know: "I'm really stumped by a situation", you don't know what to do, that kind of thing.

Okay.

Then if you "do something off your own bat"-there's the bat-it means you do something on your

own initiative.

You'll think of something, and nobody has asked you to do it-maybe at work-but on your

own initiative, you think: "Oh, that would be a good idea.

I think I'll do that."

You don't ask anybody; you just think: "I'll do that.

It will be helpful."

So you do it off your own bat; your own initiative, and hopefully then people will say: "Oh, did

you do that?

That was useful.

Thank you.

I would never have thought of doing that.

Well done."

So hopefully you get thanked for doing something off your own bat, unless people don't like

what you've done, and then you're in trouble, so...

And then, you know, you should have asked first before you did that.

So: "It was off my own bat".

Okay.

If you "catch someone out", going back to the cricket, the fielders try to catch a ball

after the batsman has hit it to get them out.

If they catch the ball before it hits the ground, the batsman who hit that ball or batswoman-women

play cricket, too-they are then out; they've lost their place.

So, if you catch someone out in general, ordinary life, maybe that person was telling a lie

about something and you might realize: "Ah, that can't be true", because you know something

else that disproves what they're saying.

And maybe they say they met somebody on a certain date, but then you say: "But you were

on holiday that date; you can't have met them."

And: "Oh..."

Then they say: "Oh, I got the dates wrong" or something.

Maybe they did, but you caught them out by proving that what they said was not true.

So, that's to catch someone out.

"To put a spin" - this is very similar to "bowling a googly", really.

If you put a spin on something-politicians, again, do this a lot-they might exaggerate

something or give something a certain additional meaning that it doesn't really have.

If you put a spin...

If you spin...

Put a spin on the ball when the bowler bowls the ball, they make it spin so that, again,

when the batsman hits it, it goes in an unexpected direction.

So: "To put a spin on something" is to do that; to distort or exaggerate in some way.

So, someone could be called a "spin bowler" or a "spin doctor" in politics.

If they put a spin on a story, they're exaggerating some aspect of it, just maybe to...

If a journalist writes an article and it's designed to sell more newspapers because they're

trying to suggest there's some sort of scandal or controversy when in fact there isn't really,

but they're just making something out of nothing, or making something out of a very small detail

that wasn't really important just to try to get some political advantage or something

like that.

So, that's the spin, which is used in politics a lot now and in the media.

And then, finally, if someone says: "It just...

It's just not cricket!" - traditionally, the game of cricket is meant to be a very honourable

game, played by gentlemen, so they're supposed to be honest and honourable.

If somebody does something a little bit deceptive and another person doesn't like it, they say:

"Well, you shouldn't really have done that.

You shouldn't...

You were telling a lie, there, really.

You know, it's just not cricket.

You can't behave like that.

You should be an honest person."

So, cricket is associated with honesty, even though there have been times when, you know,

there have been dishonest things happening in cricket, but let's not go into that.

So, if someone says: "It's just not cricket!" they mean, you know, it's not honest; you

should be more honest and honourable, and be...

Don't tell lies; tell the truth and be a respectable person that people can trust.

Okay, so those are the eleven idioms.

I hope that's useful.

And from my explanation of roughly how cricket works, these metaphors should make more sense

now.

So, I hope that's useful.

If you'd like to go to the website: www.engvid.com, and do the quiz on this subject, test your

knowledge, and subscribe to my channel if you've liked this lesson, and see you again

soon.

Okay, bye.