Bowling The Yanks Over With A Cricket Metaphor

Once a byword for fairness and moral certitude, cricket was used to illustrate the exact opposite by Eddie Jones, England’s rugby coach, after Italy resorted to underhand tactics in their recent home nation’s match at Twickenham.

- Derek Pringle

The intricacies of the rules being stretched by Italy may elude many of us but Jones, who once played cricket for Randwick in Sydney, likened it to Trevor Chappell’s underarm ball to Brian McKechnie in 1981, when New Zealand required six runs to win off the final ball of a one-day international – an act that many considered beyond the pale despite it being within the Laws at the time.

Jones might have been less specific and summed up Italy’s skulduggery as “just not cricket”, but that might have upset his paymasters who probably feel rugby sets the sporting moral compass these days.

Cricket’s long history, at least 300 years of the game in England, means that many of its idioms have entered colloquial speech. They show no signs of diminishing either, cricket’s position as the second most-watched sport in the world, after football, means more and more people around the globe are au fait with its expressions and the elasticity of their meanings.

A term like “batting, or being caught, on a sticky wicket,” for instance, is commonly used in business and political circles to warn of potential difficulties and impediments to a deal, usually to the bafflement of Americans.

Of course, strictly, it should be “sticky pitch” (the wicket being the three stumps and bails) but that might confuse the Yanks even more given that an entirely different pitch exists in baseball, although never a sticky one.

City gents also talk of “playing with a straight bat”, which can mean anything from being cautious to being honest with no hidden intent.