Cricketers Tossing

Sent to "The Star, Johannesburg", Thu 24/09/2009 20:06, never published.

Your front-page headline today "No maidens? Try a full toss, cricketers told" confirms something I have been proposing for a while.


We need a snappy term for "starting a cricket match".  Some ignorant radio announcers refer to cricket matches "kicking off"!  Indeed, they use it for all kinds of events including hockey, which has a perfectly good term of its own, to "bully off".


"Bowling the first ball" is a long-winded and uninteresting term, and is not in fact the start.  It is preceded by something else: The Toss.


I therefore look forward to commentators, including yours, in future referring to the start of a cricket match as the cricketers "tossing off".