Simon Hughes
Face - the front of the bat,
so the bit that you're supposed to hit the ball with.
Farming the strike - a batsman who doesn't let his less able partner face much
of the bowling, usually by pinching a single at the end of each over, is said to be farming the strike.
Fine - a ball that deflects off the bat without changing
its course much.
Finger spin - spin
applied more by tweaking the fingers than by flexing the wrist. A conventional off spinner is regarded as a finger spinner, though this is misleading because he
uses his wrist to turn the
ball as well.
First class - matches of at least three-days duration played by a recognised county, state, zonal or representative sides in any of the Test-playing countries.
Flash - an uninhibited (often wild) stroke at a fairly wide delivery.
Flier - can mean a very fast dangerous pitch or rapid run scoring at the beginning of an innings – 'West Indies have got off to a flier'.
Flipper - a back spinner 'flipped' or squeezed out of
the front of the hand by a leg-break bowler. It skids low after pitching, is difficult to play and even more difficult to master.
Follow-on - this is when the batting team is asked to go in again because their first innings finished 200 or more runs behind the opposition's total. (In county cricket the differential is 150.) Usually it shuts the team following-on out of the game and the best they can hope for is a draw. Botham's heroics at Headingley in 1981 created the only time in the twentieth century when a side won a
Test having been asked to
follow on.
Footholds - the area
within the crease lines where the bowler lands to deliver the ball. They can get quite deep and rutted as the match progresses and have to be filled in with special clay.
Fourball - a wide or overpitched delivery that
is asking to be hit to the boundary.
Front foot - the batsman's foot closest to the bowler when he's standing sideways at the wicket (the left foot
in the case of a right-hand batsman). A shot 'off the
front foot' is one played
with the weight on that
front leg.
Full toss - a ball which doesn't bounce before reaching the batsman. Normally an accident, and, unless it's very high or swinging viciously, an easy
ball to score off. See fourball.
Copyright material reproduced under license from Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London, England
Copyright © Simon Hughes 2001
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