Joe Root shifts his weight forward, rising with the lifting ball from back of a good length. As it nears his body he moves his hands and bat towards the ball. In one seamless motion, with the ball under his eyes, he adjusts his weight back a touch, twisting his wrists to open the face of the blade. He lets the ball come to him before directing it through the gap between third slip and gully.
That is a lot of words to say that Joe Root has yet again steered one behind square for four.
Or did he guide it? Or caress it? Or dab it? He certainly didn’t lash it or drill it. It is just a touch. The merest of deflections. A gentle kiss. It has become the Joe Root staple, the perfect embodiment of a supremely gifted athlete in complete control of his universe.
When you’re on the Guardian’s over-by-over commentary you need a catalogue of verbs to serve as shorthand, especially when Ravindra Jadeja is hurtling through his overs. Stephen Fry compiled a list of more than 100 words that can be used to describe the action of hitting a ball. There are the simple ones; your pokes, your whacks, your slogs. But every now and then you may want to get a little funky and use your platform to flex your repertoire. Caution, though, is required.
“Occasionally, you say something that doesn’t quite land,” says the BBC’s Test Match Special commentator Daniel Norcross. “One I like to use is strapple, which I think best explains the straight pull shot with a cross bat that goes past the bowler. Another is greeble, which is when a batter, usually a lower-order one, uncontrollably squirts one off the outside edge for a single past gully, infuriating the bowler. These aren’t real words but they make sense if you understand how a batter moves in the crease.”
Some players are synonymous with certain descriptors. It is said Alastair Cook amassed 12,472 Test runs with little more than a nudge off the hips, not to be confused with Graeme Smith’s muscular biffs. Brian Lara flayed and scythed at any width outside the off stump while Robin Smith, according to Norcross, “savaged short balls with sheer violence”.
By using verbs that evoke everyday actions – pummelled over square-leg, dribbled past point – commentators and bloggers are able to circumnavigate the need to dumb down the rhetoric in an attempt to make the narrative more accessible. Even non-cricket tragics could conjure up an image when I report Aiden Markram had just smoked one past cover off the front foot. Perhaps the sight of his high elbow, his weight leaning over a bent front knee and the arcing bat through the air remain elusive. But the velocity of the ball through the infield is instantly apparent.
“Cricket offers so much room for creativity,” says Henry Moeran of the BBC. “Unlike baseball, where every shot is more or less carried out in the same fashion, cricket has this three dimensional aspect to it. Different types of bowlers and pitches warrant different shots and each shot is played out in their own unique way. A player can loft a ball into the on side, but if they don’t quite time it they spoon it. A prod isn’t quite as forceful as a bunt. A tickle down to fine leg is perhaps finer than a tuck off the pads. A steer is more controlled than a chop.”
But this isn’t just about flair or flourish. Culture shapes cricket’s vocabulary too. Philasande Sixaba is a broadcaster in South Africa who specialises in isiXhosa commentary. He learned the game on the slower decks of his native Eastern Cape, but cut his teeth on the bouncy surfaces of Johannesburg, where cuts and pulls were held in higher regard.
“If you can hit a fast bowler off the back foot on the Highveld you’re a serious player,” he says. “So naturally, when I’m commentating or even talking about cricket with my mates, I get excited when I see someone cut or pull. When I add the isiXhosa element to it, it takes on a new meaning.
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“For example, when a batter is lazy at a wide ball we say ‘ulahla izandla ebholeni’, which means you’re giving up on the ball, even though you’re still chasing the ball with your hands away from your body. Another one is ‘ukwela ematini’, which roughly translates to dancing down the mat. The mat is the pitch and is a reference to the time where black people in the country could only play on matted surfaces. It’s a nod to where we’ve come from and carries importance to this day.”
Some shots evolve into adjectives in their own right. A flick is always wristy. A hoick is agricultural. You scoop from one knee as if digging a hole on the beach. A punch is firm and straight, like a robust argument.
The scoreboard offers facts and the wagon wheel offers shapes, but it is language that gives cricket its colour. Feathers to deep third, thrashes through the covers, mows towards cow corner and fine laps over the fielder at 45. We’ve turned individual strokes into stories, morphing a game of numbers into one of poetry.
