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Leg spin is a type of spin bowling in cricket. A leg spinner bowls right-arm with a wrist spin action. The leg spinner's normal delivery causes the ball to spin from right to left when the ball bounces on the pitch. For a right-handed batsman, that is away from the leg side, and this is where it gets the name leg break.
Off spin is a type of finger spin bowling in cricket. A bowler who uses this technique is called an off spinner. Off spinners are right-handed spin bowlers who use their fingers to spin the ball. Their normal delivery is an off break, which spins from left to right when the ball bounces on the pitch. For a right-handed batsman, this is from his off side to the leg side. The ball breaks away from the off side, hence the name 'off break'.
In the game of cricket, a googly refers to a type of delivery bowled by a right-arm leg spin bowler. The googly is a variation of the typical leg spin type of delivery, in that the cricket ball is presented from the bowler's hand in such a way that once the ball pitches, it deviates in the opposite direction of a leg spinning type of delivery. It has also been colloquially and affectionately referred to as the wrong'un, Bosie or Bosey, with those latter two eponyms referring to Bernard Bosanquet, the bowler who originally devised and began using the googly.
Bowling, in cricket, is the action of propelling the ball toward the wicket defended by a batsman. A player skilled at bowling is called a bowler; a bowler who is also a competent batter is known as an all-rounder. Bowling the ball is distinguished from throwing the ball by a strictly specified biomechanical definition, which restricts the angle of extension of the elbow. A single act of bowling the ball towards the batsman is called a ball or a delivery. Bowlers bowl deliveries in sets of six, called an over. Once a bowler has bowled an over, a teammate will bowl an over from the other end of the pitch. The Laws of Cricket govern how a ball must be bowled. If a ball is bowled illegally, an umpire will rule it a no-ball. If a ball is bowled too wide of the striker for the batsman to be able to play at it with a proper cricket shot, the bowler's end umpire will rule it a wide.
In cricket, underarm bowling is as old as the sport itself. Until the introduction of the roundarm style in the first half of the 19th century, bowling was performed in the same way as in the sport of bowls, with the ball being delivered with the hand below the waist. Bowls may well be an older game than cricket and it is possible that it provided a template for delivering a ball with a degree of accuracy.
This is a general glossary of the terminology used in the sport of cricket. Where words in a sentence are also defined elsewhere in this article, they appear in italics. Certain aspects of cricket terminology are explained in more detail in cricket statistics and the naming of fielding positions is explained at fielding (cricket).
A leg cutter is a type of delivery in the sport of cricket. It is bowled by fast bowlers.
An off cutter is a type of delivery in the game of cricket. It is bowled by fast bowlers.
A delivery or ball in cricket is a single action of bowling a cricket ball toward the batsman. Once the ball has been delivered, batsmen may attempt to score runs, with the bowler and other fielders attempting to stop this by getting the batsmen out. When the ball becomes dead, the next delivery can begin.
John Small was an English professional cricketer who played from about 1756 to 1798, one of the longest careers on record. Born at Empshott, Hampshire, he is generally regarded as the greatest batsman of the 18th century and acknowledged as having been the first to master the use of the modern straight bat which was introduced in the 1760s. He scored the earliest known century in important cricket. He died at Petersfield, where he was in residence for most of his life and where he established businesses.
Edward "Lumpy" Stevens was an English professional cricketer who played first-class cricket from around 1756 to 1789. He was an outstanding bowler who is generally regarded as the first great bowler in the game's history. He was universally known by his nickname and was always called "Lumpy" in contemporary scorecards and reports.
Richard "Dick" Nyren (c. 1734–1797) was an English professional cricketer who played first-class cricket during the 1760s and 1770s in the heyday of the Hambledon Club. A genuine all-rounder and the earliest known left-hander of note, Nyren was the captain of Hampshire when its team included players like John Small, Thomas Brett and Tom Sueter. Although the records of many matches in which he almost certainly played have been lost, he made 51 known appearances between 1764 and 1784. He was known as the team's "general" on the field and, for a time, acted as the club secretary as well as taking care of matchday catering for many years.
In cricket, roundarm bowling is a bowling style that was introduced in the first quarter of the 19th century and largely superseded underarm bowling by the 1830s. Using a roundarm action, the bowlers extend their arm about 90 degrees from their body at the point where they release the ball. Roundarm fell into decline after 1864 when the current style of overarm bowling was legalised, although W. G. Grace continued to use it to the end of his career.
Thomas Walker was an English cricketer who played for Hampshire in the days of the Hambledon Club and later for Surrey. He was famous for his brilliant defensive batting. He is also credited with introducing, roundarm bowling, the predecessor of modern overarm bowling.
Wrist spin is a type of bowling in the sport of cricket. It refers to the cricket technique and specific hand movements associated with imparting a particular direction of spin to the cricket ball. The other spinning technique, usually used to spin the ball in the opposite direction, is finger spin. Wrist spin is bowled by releasing the ball from the back of the hand, so that it passes over the little finger. Done by a right-handed bowler, this imparts an anticlockwise rotation to the ball, as seen from the bowler's perspective; a left-handed wrist spinner rotates the ball clockwise.
Finger spin is a type of bowling in the sport of cricket. It refers to the cricket technique and specific hand movements associated with imparting a particular direction of spin to the cricket ball. The other spinning technique, generally used to spin the ball in the opposite direction, is wrist spin. Although there are exceptions, finger spinners generally turn the ball less than wrist spinners. However, because the technique is simpler and easier to master, finger spinners tend to be more accurate.
David Harris was an English cricketer who played first-class cricket from 1782 to 1798.
William Barber (1734–1805) was an English cricketer who played for the Hambledon Club in its great days during the 1760s and 1770s. Originally from Walberton, near Chichester, he came to Hambledon to play after being "spotted".
The Cricketers of My Time is a memoir of cricket, nominally written by the former Hambledon cricketer John Nyren about the players of the late 18th century, most of whom he knew personally. Nyren, who had no recognised literary skill, collaborated with the eminent Shakespearean scholar Charles Cowden Clarke to produce his work. It is believed that Cowden Clarke recorded Nyren's verbal reminiscences and so "ghosted" the text.
In cricket in the early 1760s, there was a transition from the sport's "pioneering phase" to its "pre-modern phase" when bowlers began to bowl pitched deliveries by pitching the ball towards the wicket instead of rolling or skimming it along the ground as they had previously done. The essential bowling action was still underarm but the introduction of a ball travelling through the air coupled with a bounce was a key point of evolution in the sport's history, especially as it was the catalyst for the invention of the straight bat, which replaced the old "hockey stick" design. It was the first of three keypoint evolutions in bowling: the others were the introduction of the roundarm style in the 1820s and overarm in the 1860s.