Mel Cooke

Title: Cricket Lovely Cricket

Authors: Alisia Lawson and Tanya Phillips

Editor: Tony Becca

Publishers: Alisia Lawson and Tanya Phillips

Reviewed by: Mel Cooke, Freelance writer

Ahhh! It is cricket, lovely cricket from Greenfield, Trelawny, to Bourda, Georgetown, and many points in

between where the finger 'juk' does not mean something rude or an impending prostate examination.

Cricket is a lot like journalism, though, with tons of self-proclaimed experts who have never practised what they preach so passionately of and those really in the know putting a shroud around their supposedly arcane art, assuming rarefied airs that starve those not accepted into the ranks. And it all comes down to jargon.

Alisia Lawson and Tanya Phillips clear those airs at the point where the village cricket expert meets the village writer (and chatterbox, too) with Cricket Lovely Cricket, How to Play the Game of Cricket. At 26 pages it is a reduced overs one-day innings in which the tail wags and wags mightily - it is okay to skip to the nine-page glossary of terms which starts with 'all-rounder' ('a player who bats and bowls efficiently') and ends with 'zooter' ('a ball bowled by a leg spin bowler which has very little or no spin on it').

In between are definitions for standard terms such as 'batsman', 'leg before wicket' and 'over', but less straighforward terms such as 'ferret' ('a very poor batsman') are also cleared up. I thought 'eg. Courtney Walsh' - who writes the foreword for this handy little text - would have been a good addition there, but then I encountered another beast in the glossary in 'rabbit', 'a very poor batsman, who is usually good at bowling'.

The 'Cricket Glossary' is the last of seven sections in 'Cricket Lovely Cricket' dedicated to the game (the first two are Walsh's foreword and a note from the pair of ladies 'to our readers'). With illustrations - a couple of West Indies players - from Clovis throughout, the game's 'History' is covered, then the nuts and bolts of 'Getting Started', 'Playing The Game' 'You're Out', 'Umpire Signals' and 'Scoring the Game' come before the glossary.

A rare quibble with 'Cricket Lovely Cricket' comes in 'Getting Started', which states, 'Cricket is very much like the game of baseball.' Nah. It stops with small stick meets hard ball, cause we don't make special small sticks to slap balls into the atmosphere roun' here. Neither do our pants look like they are outlining creases other than the one marked on the ground. And they don't stop and have a bite off-field or a drink on it from time to time either (hey, those are not in the glossary).

Then again, it may be my America and Iraq thing cropping up again.

The difference between bails, stumps and wicket is illustrated, as are a couple of the nine ways to be out. The last is 'timed out', where 'a new batsman takes longer than two minutes to reach the wicket'.

And I always thought the batsmen were getting an early warm-up when they were hustling across the greenery.

The illustrations are key the explanations of the umpire's signals (a touch of the shoulder with the fingertips on the same side of the body is a 'short run') and, glory be, the scoreboard is explained and illustrated.

Written by novices for novices, pretend experts and experts, 'Cricket Lovely Cricket, How to Play the Game of Cricket' is very reader friendly, with large type and in simple terms. The editor, though, is no novice, as Tony Becca is a noted cricket writer and former sports editor at The Gleaner.

So in this season of bats and bawls and bails and bawling, this handy text is a great starting point. It won't allow youto speak sagely of such and such's innings at such and such a place and how such and such bowler compares to who from whahoozie time, but you will understand the game.

And the persons making those wonderful references are often speaking a 'wrong'un' anyway.