A question for the Brits here

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I'm sorry this thread upset you. If you'd like to know the meaning of any Americanisms, I'd be happy to chat about it.

Thank you Fluffy. I love chatting with people from overseas and its mostly little differences that interest me. Like what do Japanese people put on McDonalds fries for example? In the US most folks only put Catsup, but I know that's not the case world wide.

We have ketchup. We are probably imagining them having wasabi on their fries and they are probably having ketchup too .

So's "Chav." It is NEVER used positively. Unfortunately, people can get away with class-based hatred in this country.

I spent 2004 out of Britain and came back to discover two new words in circulation: "chav" and "twerk." Linguistic drift, you suck.

Most people call "catsup" "ketchup" here in the US.

We have "twerking" here in the states too. We had the thing first (the dance move) years before I ever heard the term for it though.

Not true.

There are areas in the UK where "Chav" is used in the context derived from the Romany "chavi" (young man or child) to denote familiarity or friendship with the subject.

"Alright chav(i), how ya doin?"

There are other Romany words found commonly in certain dialects, such as Gadjo/Gadji, Chor (pronounced chure) and Cushty (as popularised by Only Fools and Horses).

Chav was an early 2000's casual slur against young, unintelligent folk who tried to glamorise a certain street/urban culture but to everyone on the outside it just looked cheap, fake & quite laughable.

I would not attach 'criminal' to chavs at all, they are more people who want to act a bit threatening by hanging around on street corners in gangs but in general they are youngsters who are not brave/big time enough to actually do anything.

Through a lack of money and resource their clothing is often cheap imitation high street designer, full tracksuits and cheap jewellery on show.

Also 'gypsy' is not a slur in the UK at all. That is the term used by gypsies a lot to describe themselves, although round my way 'travellers' is more common. See boxing heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, he refers to himself as 'King Gypsy'. I live just down the road from a large traveller site and there is another 4 miles away, I went to school with a load of them and see them around here all the time. My next door neighbours are gypsies as the local site is having work done on it and the council have moved them out until the summer.

The derogatory term for them is 'pikies'. That is a word casually thrown around by everyone else to describe them but you would never ever utter it in front of them.

I love cricket! The amount of stats involved and how much you follow it as a long strategy game is just fantastic. Keep in mind as well that cricket can be enjoyed while not actually watching any action, it goes on for days and you just keep a track of how the scoring is going. I have a score counter in the corner of my work screen when matches are on so I know what is happening.

When you get it, it is a great game to follow.

I am more than happy to explain how it works if you are serious. It's really not actually very complicated, it can be as simple as you want it to be to your own level of enthusiasm and enjoyment.

And Canada do play cricket! They are just not very good at it.

Although Travellers do now seem to refer to themselves as Gypsies,
the word Gypsy always used to refer to the Romani.



The derogatory term was a Gyppo.

Hello sir. I am serious. First off, I am wondering how you decide when the game is over because there is apparently no time limit. Also how do you score and what happens in a typical play.

I think it has something to do, sometimes, with something called "overs." Once you complete a certain amount of "overs," the game is over.

Then I'm thinking---some of the longer matches are not over until everybody on the respective cricket team has made an "out."

Test cricket (international professional cricket) these days has a time limit of 5 days of 6 hours play each (with some wiggle room). The game is over either when both teams have completed their time batting (by losing all their batters or by declaring the innings over) or the time limit has been reached. In the first case, the team with the highest score wins. In the second case, there is no winner and the game is an automatic draw, regardless of score.
Edit: forgot to mention test cricket usually schedules four innings during that 5 day limit, each team gets two turns batting and bowling, essentially two games of cricket amalgamated into one, with the cumulative score counting for the match as a whole. Same rules apply though.

You can play timeless cricket if you want, it used to be normal I understand, but that is rare these days. In that case the game doesn't end until all batters are out or both sides have declared and there is always a winner.



There are quite a few eccentricities but:
Scoring - short answer: as batter you hit the ball (usually), then you and your batting partner run to each other's respective wicket (or more specifically the lined zone around the wickets) before the field team can retrieve the ball and smash it into your wicket (being run out). Each successful traversal between the two wickets is one run. The batters have to judge whether they can risk a run before the field team can run them out.

See this video below for an odd example. Batter gives the ball a good hit, they score 4 runs, the fielder who retrieves the ball throws it towards the wicket, but the keeper misses the ball (either that or it was a bad throw, hard to tell), the ball runs off into the field again, so the batters keep running, scoring a very unusual 7 runs off one ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtOi69xx03o

If the batter hits the ball hard enough and it crosses the outer boundary without hitting the ground that's a six (automatic six runs - no need for the batters to do the actual running, they saunter back to their wickets), if the ball hits the ground before crossing the boundary and bounces over it, that's a four (automatic four runs).

A typical play is a more amusing question. In high stakes first class cricket, with good batsmen facing off good bowlers and a good field team, a typical play is probably the batter playing it safe. The bowler bowls, the batter intercepts the ball (to prevent the ball from hitting the wicket - being bowled out) with his bat at an angle to ensure the ball hits the ground (so the field team can't catch it - being caught out), the ball patters along the ground, the field team pick it up quickly, too quickly for the batters to attempt a run, so no runs are scored in that play.

There are games limited by overs too yes, but the rules can be slightly different, with restrictions on the number of overs any one bowler can bowl in one day internationals. High score still wins, ties are possible, but not draws I think, as in time limited games, unless something very strange happens. In shorter 20-over games, ties are not possible, because a method of settling them was invented.

Folks might enjoy this set of short videos exploring some of the more esoteric rules, I didn't know half of these. Narrated by Stephen Fry!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ_aQXo ... Ly4YRjDEYz

happy to move this onto the sport section if you want and chat about it there. the basics of Test Cricket are

2 teams of 11.
The wickets are 22 yards apart.
One team bats and they have 2 batsmen in play, one on each wicket.
when one team is batting the other team is fielding and they have all 11 players out in the field

The fielding team has nominated bowlers (4 is typical in test cricket) who take it in turns to bowl at one wicket to try and get the batsman out. The ways of getting them out are either hitting the wicket so that the stumps fall off, or catching the ball once they hit it.
The batsman needs to hit the ball to score runs. a run is the batsman running from one wicket to the other. While doing this the other batsman who is not being bowled at has to also run as they are essentially swapping places. If the fielding team collect the hit ball and throw it back towards the wickets then they can hit the wickets with it if the batsman has not managed to complete his run fully.

If a batsman hits the ball outside the pitch and the ball bounces first then he scores 4 runs. if he hits it outside the pitch without it bouncing he scores 6

Mostly the bowlers are typically trying to bowl a ball that tempts the batsman into hitting it but ideally the ball will have enough 'spin' or 'swing' on it that either the batsman only gets an ever so slight touch (called an 'edge') so that someone stood behind him can atch it on it or he hits it but it doesn't go where he intended it to and someone catches it.

The bowling team bowls until they get all of the batting team out, or if they are not doing well then the batting team can 'declare' which means they score so many runs that they feel they can happily give up batting as they think they will win.

The teams then swap over and do it all again so that each have batted and fielded to see who is winning.

The game is based on both teams batting and fielding twice so it is essentially a combined total score of 2 games. It is not uncommon though for the game to be finished after the 3rd innings so one team doesn't get to have their final bat or field just because one team is so dominant that they have already won the game.

Example:

England bat and are all out for 200
Australia have their turn batting and score 500 with only 5 players out. they declare as they are 300 ahead already.
England go in to bat for the 2nd time and score 280 all out.

Australia win after just 3 innings as they have already scored more while getting the opponent out.

You also have to remember that it is not just scoring more than the other team, you need to score more then also get them out. This then creates a situation where a team is clearly on course to lose so stops trying to score runs and instead just blocks every ball being bowled at them. The bowling team then have a problem, so they start crowding around the batsman and diving towards the ball after he blocks it hoping to catch it before it hits the floor. the bowler would typically be spinning the ball so it go upwards after hitting the bat to help the fielders catch it.

Typically you have spin bowlers and pace bowlers. Spin bowlers throw it slowly but with loads of spin on it so it bounces in front of the batsman and goes off at a different angle. Pace bowlers throw it really fast (upwards of 90mph) and put swing on the ball making it swerve in the air and fool the batsman.

A cricket ball is very hard and heavy and has thick stitching on it to held the bowlers swing and spin. The bowlers also 'shine' one side of the ball throughout the game to keep one side clean helping to add further swing.