Robin Moroney: Fine Point taken! Yet no aspect of
cricket is “unimportant!” My own digs at Cambridge (Maths Tripos
1950-54) overlooked Parkers Piece at which many informal cricket
matches were a summer distraction. The world’s major players could be
seen at Fenners tackling the Varsity side. Did VN partake during his
Trinity years? I would hope he encountered the leading pacifist
mathematician G H Hardy who was also a cricket fanatic.
BTW: DN’s lemniscate is an smooth closed curve to dream on — not just
infinity and butterfly wings, but also sister Lo’s emerging bosomy
substances. If we are analyzing the paths of points on VN’s unstable
bicycle, some degenerate form of the spiky CYCLOID must be invoked!
Meanwhile:
http://www.channel4.com/sport/cricket/analyst/bowling/ana_62.html
supports my view that the terms “Chinaman” and “Googly” have become
close cognates even among the experts. There are many ways (some yet
undiscovered!) to make an off-break look like a leg-break delivery. One
must expect a fuzzy & volatile taxonomy in describing such actions.
(Compare, e.g., the names for fielding positions where qualifiers such
as “fine,” “deep,” and “silly” accumulate in the absence of a precise
cartesian grid!)
Also, that one should be cautious re-word/idiom origins (Prof John
MacWhorter and other serious linguists refer to “etymologies” as
“Just-so stories.”). The John Arlot story has many of the urban-mythic
barroom traces (stories that should be true even if false) -- but a
major fallacy is that words/idioms have a uniquely, true, verifiable
source. VN’s “googled” can surely be based (and worshipped) on any
number of concurrent word-plays?
Stan Kelly-Bootle
skb@bootle.biz