Legside (pronounced leg-sahyd)
(1)
In the terminology of cricket (also as onside), in conjunction with “offside”,
the half of the cricket field behind the batter in their normal batting stance.
(2)
In the terminology of horse racing, in conjunction with “offside”, the sides of
the horse relative to the rider.
Pre
1800s: The construct was leg + side. Leg
was from the Middle English leg &
legge, from the Old Norse leggr (leg, calf, bone of the arm or
leg, hollow tube, stalk), from the Proto-Germanic lagjaz & lagwijaz (leg,
thigh). Although the source is
uncertain, the Scandinavian forms may have come from a primitive Indo-European root
used to mean “to bend” which would likely also have been linked with the Old
High German Bein (bone, leg). It was cognate with the Scots leg (leg), the Icelandic leggur (leg, limb), the Norwegian Bokmål
legg (leg), the Norwegian Nynorsk legg (leg), the Swedish lägg (leg, shank, shaft), the Danish læg (leg), the Lombardic lagi (thigh, shank, leg), the Latin lacertus (limb, arm), and the Persian لنگ (leng). After it entered the language, it mostly displaced
the native Old English term sċanca (from
which Modern English ultimately gained “shank”) which was probably from a root
meaning “crooked” (in the literal sense of “bent” rather than the figurative used of crooked
Hillary Clinton). Side was from the Middle
English side, from the Old English sīde (flanks of a person, the long part
or aspect of anything), from the Proto-Germanic sīdǭ (side, flank, edge, shore),
from the primitive Indo-European sēy-
(to send, throw, drop, sow, deposit). It
was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Siede
(side), the West Frisian side
(side), the Dutch zijde & zij (side), the German Low German Sied (side), the German Seite
(side), the Danish & Norwegian side
(side) and the Swedish sida (side). The Proto-Germanic sīdō was productive, being the source also of the Old Saxon sida, the Old Norse siða (flank; side of meat; coast), the Danish & Middle Dutch side, the Old High German sita and the German Seite. Legside is an adjective.
A
cricket field as described with a right-hander at the crease (batting); the
batter will be standing with their bat held to the offside (there’s no confusion
with the concept of “offside” used in football and the rugby codes because in
cricket there’s no such rule).
In cricket, the term “legside” (used also as “leg
side” or “on side”) is used to refer to the half of the field corresponding to
a batter’s non-dominant hand (viewed from their perspective); the legside can
thus be thought of as the half of the ground “behind” the while the “offside”
is that in front. This means that
what is legside and what is offside is dynamic depending on whether the batter
is left or right-handed and because in a match it’s not unusual for one of each
to be batting during an over (the basic component of a match, each over now
consisting of six deliveries of the ball directed sequentially at the batters),
as they change ends, legside and offside can swap. This has no practical significance except
that because many of the fielding positions differ according to whether a left
or right-hander is the striker. That’s
not the sole determinate of where a fielding captain will choose to set his
field because what’s referred to as a “legside” or “offside” field will often
be used in deference to the batter’s tendencies of play. It is though the main structural component of
field settings. The only exception to
this is when cricket is played in unusual conditions such as on the deck of an
aircraft carrier (remarkably, it’s been done quite often) but there’s still a
legside & offside, shifting as required between port & starboard just
as left & right are swapped ashore.
The
weird world of cricket's fielding positions.
Quite when legside & offside first came to be
used in cricket isn't known but they’ve been part of the terminology of the sport since the
rules of the game became formalized when the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club)
first codified the "Laws of Cricket" in what now seem a remarkably slim volume published in
1788, the year following the club’s founding.
There had earlier been rule books, the earliest known to have existed in
the 1730s (although no copies appear to have survived) but whether the terms were
then is use isn’t known. What is
suspected is legside and offside were borrowed from the turf where, in horse
racing jargon, they describe the sides of the horse relative to the rider. The use of the terms to split the field is
reflected also in the names of some of the fielding positions, many of which
are self-explanatory while some remain mysterious although presumably they must
have seemed a good idea at the time. One curious survivor of the culture wars which banished "batsman" & "fieldsman" to the shame of being microaggressions is "third man" which continues to be used in the men's game although in women's competition, all seem to have settled on "third", a similar clipping to that which saw "nightwatch" replace "nightwatchman"; third man surely can't last. The
ones which follow the dichotomous description of the field (although curiously “leg”
is an element of some and “on” for others) including the pairings “silly mid on” & silly mid off” and “long on & long off”, while in other cases the “leg”
is a modifier, thus “slip & leg slip” and “gully & leg gully”. Some positions use different terminology
depending on which side of the field they’re positioned, “point” on the offside
being “square leg” on the other while fractional variations in positioning
means there is lexicon of terms such as “deep backward square leg” and “wide
long off” (which experts will distinguish from a “wideish long off”).
Leg
theory
Leg
theory was a polite term for what came to be known as the infamous “bodyline”
tactic. In cricket, when bowling, the
basic idea is to hit the stumps (the three upright timbers behind the batter),
the object being to dislodge the bails (the pair of small wooden pieces which
sit in grooves, atop the three). That
done, the batter is “dismissed” and the batting side has to send a replacement,
this going on until ten batters have been dismissed, ending the innings. In essence therefore, the core idea is to aim
at the stumps but there are other ways to secure a dismissal such as a shot by
the batter being caught on the full by a fielder, thus the attraction of
bowling “wide of the off-stump” (the one of the three closest to the off side) to
entice the batter to hit a ball in the air to be caught or have one come "off the edge" of
the bat to be “caught behind”. It was
realized early on there was little to be gained by bowling down the legside
except restricting the scoring because the batter safely could ignore the
delivery, content they couldn’t be dismissed LBW (leg before wicket, where but
for the intervention of the protective pads on the legs, the ball would have
hit the wicket) because, under the rules, if the ball hits the pitch outside
the line of the leg stump, the LBW rule can’t be invoked.
A
batter can however be caught from a legside delivery and as early as the
nineteenth century this was known as leg theory, practiced mostly the slow
bowlers who relied on flight in the air and spin of the pitch to beguile the
batter. Many had some success with the
approach, the batters unable to resist the temptation of playing a shot to the
legside field where the fielders tended often to be fewer. On the slower, damper pitches of places like
England or New Zealand, the technique offered little prospect for the fast
bowlers who were usually more effective the faster they bowled but on the generally
fast, true decks in Australia, there was an opportunity because a fast, short-pitched
(one which hits the pitch first in the bowlers half of the pitch before searing
up towards the batter) delivery with a legside line would, disconcertingly, tend
at upwards of 90 mph (145 km/h) towards the batter’s head. The idea was that in attempting to avoid
injury by fending off the ball with the bat, the batter would be dismissed,
caught by one of the many fielders “packed” on the legside, the other component
of leg theory.
Leg
theory: Lindsay Lohan’s legs.
For
this reason it came to be called “fast leg theory” and it was used off and on
by many sides (in Australia and England) during the 1920s but it gained its
infamy (and the more evocative “bodyline” label) during the MCC’s (the
designation touring England teams used until the 1970s) 1932-1933 Ashes tour of
Australia. Adopted as a tactic against
the Australian batter Donald Bradman (1908–2001) against whom nothing else seemed
effective (the English noting on the 1930 tour of England he’d once scored 300
runs in a day off his own bat at Leeds), bodyline became controversial after a
number of batters were struck high on the body, one suffering a skull fracture
(this an era in which helmets and other upper-body protection were unknown). Such was the reaction the matter was a
diplomatic incident, discussed by the respective cabinets in London and
Canberra while acerbic cables were exchanged between the ACBC (Australian
Cricket Board of Control) and the MCC.
Japanese
leg theory: Zettai ryōiki (絶対領域)
is a Japanese term which translates literally as “absolute territory” and is
used variously in anime gaming and the surrounding cultural milieu. In fashion, it refers to that area of visible
bare skin above the socks (classically the above-the-knee variety) but below
the hemline of a miniskirt, shorts or top.
Japanese schoolgirls, long the trend-setters of the nation's fashions, like to pair zettai ryouiki with solid fluffy (also called "plushies") leg warmers. So influential are they that the roaming pack in this image, although they've picked up the aesthetic, are not actually real school girls. So, beware of imitations: Tokyo, April 2024.
High-level
interventions calmed thing sufficiently for the tour to continue which ended with the tourists winning the series (and thus the Ashes) 4-1. The tour remains the high-water mark of fast
leg theory because although it continued to be used when conditions were
suitable, the effectiveness was stunted by batters adjusting their
techniques and, later in the decade, the MCC updated their rule book explicitly to proscribe
“direct attack” (ie deliveries designed to hit the batter rather than the
stumps) bowling, leaving the judgment of what constituted that to the umpires. Although unrelated and an attempt to counter
the “negative” legside techniques which had evolved in the 1950s to limit
scoring, further rule changes in 1957 banned the placement of more than
two fielders behind square on the leg side, thus rendering impossible the setting of a leg
theory field. Despite all
this, what came to be called “intimidatory short pitched bowling” continued,
one of the reasons helmets began to appear in the 1970s and the rule which now
applies is that only one such delivery is permitted per over. It has never been a matter entirely about sportsmanship
and within the past decade, the Australian test player Phillip Hughes (1988-2014) was killed when struck on the neck (while wearing a helmet) by a short-pitched delivery
which severed an artery.
