 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2020) |
Sign cricket (also called pub cricket) is a car game which is played in the United Kingdom and other countries with a sufficient number of suitably named pubs. [1] Players score points by spotting pub signs: the score is equal to the total number of physical legs belonging to the people or animals in the pub's name. (For example, the King George would be worth two points.)
There are several variations of the rules. A basic version is described in the 1966 AA Book of the Road. [1] Taking it in turns during a journey, one player bats. This means he looks for pubs which the car passes. When one is found he gets a run (point) for each physical leg possessed by the subject of the title of the pub. Thus "The Jolly Sailor", a biped, gets 2 points whilst "The White Horse", a quadruped, gets 4. If a pub's name is that of an object or concept with no legs, it scores no points. A player is not out if the pub name includes the word "arms" or "head" (e.g. "The King's Head", "The Baker's Arms"), and it is the next player's turn. The game ends at the end of the journey. The player with the highest score wins.
Disputes can occur with many pub signs. For example, is "Hogshead" out (the head of a hog) or no points (the type of barrel known as a hogshead)? Does the "Highwayman's Arms" get a player out, treating "arms" as naming the highwayman's front limbs, or two points, counting his legs and treating "arms" as referring to his weapons? Is "King Henry's Rest" two points because of the King or no points because the "Rest" is an inanimate object? How many horses are there in "Coach and Horses"? Does the slug in "The Slug and Lettuce" have one leg or no legs?
These disputes can be resolved by mutual agreement as they arise but players may prefer to agree house rules in advance. There are three ways to handle signs with plural nouns such as "The Coach and Horses": (1) agree that any ill-defined plural noun counts as two of that object (so two horses, for eight points); (2) count the horses on the picture outside the pub (e.g. four horses get 16 points); or (3) agree in advance that ill-defined groups such as "The Coach and Horses" or "The Cavaliers" count a certain number of runs (e.g. six or ten).
One variation on this game scores 'runs' based on car number plates. When the driver gets behind another car, the number plate is examined, and the number plate either scores runs or wickets. The numbers in the plate are added together and multiplied by the number of vowels in the plate. If the answer is 0, then a wicket falls. For example:
Play continues until the batter loses 10 wickets, then the next player bats.
Of commonly occurring pub signs, amongst the best are "The Seven Swans" (14 points) and "Fox and Hounds" (12 points). Some unusual pub names can score far more – "The Twenty Church Wardens", in Cockley Cley, Norfolk, scores 40 points and "The Million Hare", in Woolwich, scored 4 million points in the basic version of the game until it was renamed. [2]
"The Cricketers" scores four points (the number of cricketers is unspecified, so assume two) but "The Cricket Team", if it existed, would score 22 (there are eleven cricketers on a cricket team). "The Eleven Cricketers" at Storrington in Sussex, now closed, did score 22 runs since the number of cricketers was specified.
The "Duke of York's Men" can be argued to fetch 20,000 points, by reference to the nursery rhyme, but can also be argued to score only four points as the name does not specify how many men. Similarly, "The Beehive" could be argued to equal 60000 points, as there would be at least 10,000 bees in a beehive; conversely it could be argued to gain twelve points as the number of bees are not specified. It could also be argued that the beehive is the hive itself and therefore scores no points. Finally, it could also simply be used as a convenient way to declare a winner, especially if one was, anyway, having a pub lunch.
Alice and Bob play the game using the basic version and handling plurals using method (1). Alice is in.
The journey ends. Bob wins with 24 points to Alice's 22.
Leg before wicket (lbw) is one of the ways in which a batsman can be dismissed in the sport of cricket. Following an appeal by the fielding side, the umpire may rule a batter out lbw if the ball would have struck the wicket but was instead intercepted by any part of the batter's body. The umpire's decision will depend on a number of criteria, including where the ball pitched, whether the ball hit in line with the wickets, the ball's expected future trajectory after hitting the batsman, and whether the batter was attempting to hit the ball.
The Australia men's national cricket team represents Australia in men's international cricket. As the joint oldest team in Test cricket history, playing in the first ever Test match in 1877, the team also plays One-Day International (ODI) and Twenty20 International (T20I) cricket, participating in both the first ODI, against England in the 1970–71 season and the first T20I, against New Zealand in the 2004–05 season, winning both games. The team draws its players from teams playing in the Australian domestic competitions – the Sheffield Shield, the Australian domestic limited-overs cricket tournament and the Big Bash League.
The Laws of Cricket is a code which specifies the rules of the game of cricket worldwide. The earliest known code was drafted in 1744 and, since 1788, it has been owned and maintained by its custodian, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in London. There are currently 42 Laws which outline all aspects of how the game is to be played. MCC has re-coded the Laws six times, the seventh and latest code being released in October 2017. The 2nd edition of the 2017 Code came into force on 1 April 2019. The first six codes prior to 2017 were all subject to interim revisions and so exist in more than one version.
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).
Walter Reginald Hammond was an English first-class cricketer who played for Gloucestershire in a career that lasted from 1920 to 1951. Beginning as a professional, he later became an amateur and was appointed captain of England. Primarily a middle-order batsman, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack described him in his obituary as one of the four best batsmen in the history of cricket. He was considered to be the best English batsman of the 1930s by commentators and those with whom he played; they also said that he was one of the best slip fielders ever. Hammond was an effective fast-medium pace bowler and contemporaries believed that if he had been less reluctant to bowl, he could have achieved even more with the ball than he did.
In cricket, batting is the act or skill of hitting the ball with a bat to score runs and prevent the loss of one's wicket. Any player who is currently batting is, since September 2021, officially referred to as a batter —regardless of whether batting is their particular area of expertise. Batters have to adapt to various conditions when playing on different cricket pitches, especially in different countries; therefore, as well as having outstanding physical batting skills, top-level batters will have quick reflexes, excellent decision-making skills, and be good strategists.
In cricket, a player's bowling average is the number of runs they have conceded per wicket taken. The lower the bowling average is, the better the bowler is performing. It is one of a number of statistics used to compare bowlers, commonly used alongside the economy rate and the strike rate to judge the overall performance of a bowler.
Cricket is a multi-faceted sport with different formats, depending on the standard of play, the desired level of formality, and the time available. One of the main differences is between matches limited by time in which the teams have two innings apiece, and those limited by number of overs in which they have a single innings each. The former, known as first-class cricket if played at the senior level, has a scheduled duration of three to five days ; the latter, known as limited overs cricket because each team bowls a limit of typically 50 overs, has a planned duration of one day only. A separate form of limited overs is Twenty20, originally designed so that the whole game could be played in a single evening, in which each team has an innings limited to twenty overs.
Baseball and cricket are the best-known members of a family of related bat-and-ball games. Both have fields that are 400 feet (120 m) or more in diameter between their furthest endpoints, offensive players who can hit a thrown/"bowled" ball out of the field and run between safe areas to score runs (points) at the risk of being gotten out, and have a major game format lasting about 3 hours.
Norman Walter Dransfield Yardley was an English cricketer who played for Cambridge University, Yorkshire County Cricket Club and England, as a right-handed batsman and occasional bowler. An amateur, he captained Yorkshire from 1948 to 1955 and England on fourteen occasions between 1947 and 1950, winning four Tests, losing seven and drawing three. Yardley was named Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1948 and in his obituary in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, he was described as Yorkshire's finest amateur since Stanley Jackson.
Dennis Brian Close, was an English first-class cricketer. He was picked to play against New Zealand in July 1949, when he was 18 years old. Close went on to play 22 Test matches for England, captaining them seven times to six wins and one drawn test. Close also captained Yorkshire to four county championship titles – the main domestic trophy in English cricket. He later went on to captain Somerset, where he is widely credited with developing the county into a hard-playing team, and helping to mould Viv Richards and Ian Botham into the successful players they became.
In cricket, a scorer is someone appointed to record all runs scored, all wickets taken and, where appropriate, the number of overs bowled. In professional games, in compliance with Law 3 of the Laws of Cricket, two scorers are appointed, most often one provided by each team.
Robert Graeme Pollock is a former cricketer for South Africa, Transvaal and Eastern Province. A member of a famous cricketing family, Pollock is widely regarded as one of South Africa's greatest ever cricketers, and as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. Despite Pollock's international career being cut short at the age of 26 by the sporting boycott of South Africa, and all but one of his 23 Test matches being against England and Australia, the leading cricket nations of the day, he broke a number of records. His completed career Test match batting average of 60.97 remains the third best behind Sir Don Bradman and Adam Voges.
Herbert Sutcliffe was an English professional cricketer who represented Yorkshire and England as an opening batsman. Apart from one match in 1945, his first-class career spanned the period between the two world wars. His first-class debut was delayed by the First World War until 1919 and his career was effectively terminated in August 1939 when he was called up for military service in the imminent Second World War. He was the first cricketer to score 16 centuries in Test match cricket.He is most famous for being the partner of Jack Hobbs and the partnership between the two,Hobbs and Sutcliffe is widely regarded as the greatest partnership of all time.
Clement "Clem" Hill was an Australian cricketer who played 49 Test matches as a specialist batsman between 1896 and 1912. He captained the Australian team in ten Tests, winning five and losing five. A prolific run scorer, Hill scored 3,412 runs in Test cricket—a world record at the time of his retirement—at an average of 39.21 per innings, including seven centuries. In 1902, Hill was the first batsman to make 1,000 Test runs in a calendar year, a feat that would not be repeated for 45 years. His innings of 365 scored against New South Wales for South Australia in 1900–01 was a Sheffield Shield record for 27 years. The South Australian Cricket Association named a grandstand at the Adelaide Oval in his honour in 2003 and he was inducted into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame in 2005.
George Herbert Hirst was a professional English cricketer who played first-class cricket for Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 1891 and 1921, with a further appearance in 1929. One of the best all-rounders of his time, Hirst was a left arm medium-fast bowler and right-handed batsman. He played in 24 Test matches for England between 1897 and 1909, touring Australia twice. He completed the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in an English cricket season 14 times, the second most of any cricketer after his contemporary and team-mate Wilfred Rhodes. One of the Wisden Cricketers of the Year for 1901, Hirst scored 36,356 runs and took 2,742 wickets in first-class cricket. In Tests, he made 790 runs and captured 59 wickets.
The England cricket team toured Australia during the 1982–83 season, playing a five-Test series for The Ashes and a number of tour matches against Australian domestic teams before competing in a One-Day International (ODI) series against New Zealand for the Rothmans Cup. In between those competitions, England also participated in the Benson & Hedges World Series Cricket triangular ODI series against Australia and New Zealand.
1947 was the 48th season of County Championship cricket in England. It is chiefly remembered for the batting performances of Denis Compton and Bill Edrich who established seasonal records that, with the subsequent reduction in the number of first-class matches, will probably never be broken. Their form was key to their team Middlesex winning the County Championship for the first time since 1921, although they were involved in a tight contest for the title with the eventual runners-up Gloucestershire, for whom Tom Goddard was the most outstanding bowler of the season. Compton and Edrich were assisted by the fact that it was the driest and sunniest English summer for a generation, ensuring plenty of good batting wickets.
1906 was the 17th season of County Championship cricket in England. The title was decided in the final round of matches with Kent County Cricket Club finishing just ahead of Yorkshire. George Hirst completed a unique "double Double" of 2,385 runs and 208 wickets. Tom Hayward broke Bobby Abel’s 1901 record for the most runs scored in a first-class season.
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a 22-yard (20-metre) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striking the ball bowled at one of the wickets with the bat and then running between the wickets, while the bowling and fielding side tries to prevent this and dismiss each batter. Means of dismissal include being bowled, when the ball hits the stumps and dislodges the bails, and by the fielding side either catching the ball after it is hit by the bat, but before it hits the ground, or hitting a wicket with the ball before a batter can cross the crease in front of the wicket. When ten batters have been dismissed, the innings ends and the teams swap roles. The game is adjudicated by two umpires, aided by a third umpire and match referee in international matches. They communicate with two off-field scorers who record the match's statistical information.