The words, decoded
Glossary
Cricket has a vocabulary all its own. Here are the terms you will hear most, in plain English.
- All-rounder
- A player good enough to earn their place with both bat and ball.
- Bail
- One of the two small wooden pieces resting on top of the stumps; dislodging a bail is what breaks the wicket.
- Bouncer
- A short-pitched fast delivery that rears up around the batter's head.
- Boundary
- The rope marking the edge of the field; also the four or six runs scored by hitting the ball to or over it.
- Century
- An individual score of 100 runs or more — the benchmark of a great innings.
- Crease
- The marked lines defining a batter's safe ground and where the bowler must deliver from.
- Death overs
- The closing overs of a limited-overs innings, when batters attack and bowlers defend the total.
- Declaration
- A captain voluntarily ending their team's innings, used in Test cricket to leave time to bowl the opposition out.
- Duck
- Being dismissed for a score of zero. Out first ball is a 'golden duck'.
- Economy rate
- Runs a bowler concedes per over — the lower the better.
- Extras
- Runs added to the team total that aren't credited to any batter: wides, no-balls, byes and leg-byes.
- Googly
- A wrist-spinner's disguised delivery that turns the opposite way to the batter's expectation.
- Hat-trick
- Three wickets taken by a bowler with three consecutive deliveries.
- Innings
- A team's or a batter's turn at batting. Used both ways: 'India's innings' and 'a fine innings of 90'.
- Maiden
- An over from which no runs are scored off the bat.
- Nightwatchman
- A lower-order batter sent in late in the day to protect a better batter until the next morning.
- No-ball
- An illegal delivery (often overstepping the crease) that costs a run and usually a free hit.
- Over
- A set of six legal deliveries bowled consecutively from one end.
- Powerplay
- An early phase of a limited-overs innings with fielding restrictions that favour the batting side.
- Reverse swing
- Late swing achieved with an old ball, typically by fast bowlers at high pace.
- Run rate
- Average runs scored per over — the pulse of a limited-overs chase.
- Seam
- The stitched ridge on the ball; 'seam bowling' uses it to deviate off the pitch.
- Sledging
- Verbal gamesmanship aimed at unsettling the batter.
- Spin
- Slow bowling that turns the ball off the pitch using finger or wrist.
- Strike rate
- For a batter, runs scored per 100 balls — a measure of scoring speed.
- Stumps
- The three vertical posts that, with the bails, form the wicket; also the end of a day's play in a Test.
- Tail
- The lower-order batters, usually the bowlers, who bat last and least.
- Wicket
- Three meanings: the set of stumps and bails, a batter's dismissal, and the pitch itself. Context decides which.
- Yorker
- A delivery pitched right at the batter's feet — lethal at the death and hard to hit.