Sunday, December 10, 2006

Where is cricket's left field?

"Voges call comes out of left field" is the headline of an article attributed to Courtney Walsh (the former West Indies quick bowler?) and Malcolm Conn in The Weekend Australian (not online) which reports an unexpected selection in the Australian squad for the third cricket Test..

"Out of left field" is a term which derives from US baseball, not cricket. It's global English managementspeak missapplied to this situation. Why should our
distinctive and descriptive sporting language have to follow the current iteration of our foreign policy and be embedded in the US variety?

What's wrong with "Voges surprise selection in squad" as a headline?

The current issue of Quadrant
has an article "Americanising Australian English" by Robert Solomon (not online) which explores this further.

[Also posted at Casting a short shadow.]








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