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Would you rather face a Chinaman than a Yorker? Is it better to have a square leg or a fine leg? Could you spot a Bouncer better than a Googly? And, finally, would you mind being a Silly Mid Off or would you prefer to be a Slip?

Tricky questions, all, I think you'll agree. But wait a moment! Do I detect some head scratching? Could it be that there might be some confusion over some of these terms? Surely not! Who, in their right minds, does not know and love, at a very deep level, the game of cricket? Ah! I see. That's quite a lot of you.

But fear not, for help is at hand! Despite the fact that a significant portion of your education is missing, it's not too late to help you enjoy the wonderful world of cricket. In order to do so, you should be initiated into some of the strange terms we cricketers use.

Before we begin, you should know that cricket is an old game. It is known to have been played in the 16th Century and by 1744 the first set of rules were written down.

Obviously, in the intervening period of over 200 years language has changed and there have been many terms added by those 'in the know' which made perfect sense at the time but have since become difficult to understand. There are so many terms that it is difficult even to know where to begin, what to leave out and what to assume.

But let us asume the following: cricket is a played between two teams, one team winning by scoring more runs than the other. I will gloss over the mechanics of how teams can score and what they do to hit the ball, but just assume that if someone threw something heavy and round at you, and you had a lump of wood in your hand, you would try and hit it away from you. After hitting it, you would then run to escape being thrown at again. That, or something similar, occurs quite regularly in cricket.

In this brief introduction, we shall focus solely on the people who are NOT hitting the ball. These are known, collectively, as the fielding side. There are 11 of them. Two of them are special. One of them is there to catch the ball should the batsman somehow miss it (he can do other things, but let's try and keep this short). The other person is the one throwing the ball at the batsman. Actually, if we want to avoid any fights, we should not say 'throwing'. In fact, never say 'throwing' within earshot of such a person unless you can run very quickly, for it is considered to be a term of abuse(!). Rather, let us call him a bowler.

A bowler must deliver the ball to the batsman with a

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