IN 1993 I WROTE a review in WCM of The Language of Cricket by WJ Lewis – a dictionary published in 1934. I have been known to be lax with deadlines (well, there's too much hurry and rush these days, isn't there?) but the delay was unusual even for me.

It was the very passage of time that gave the book its fascination. It was full of charmingly obsolete terms like a popty, a cutsman and a Nottingham hit, which made it an intriguing read. Now John Eddowes has written a book with the same title, and he acknowledges his debt. Sixty years from now someone may review the new version as a period piece. If so, they had better be careful.

Cricket is a game with a common language, but many dialects: the pros in the dressing-room will discuss the game in quite different words from county members a few feet away: spectators, for instance, seldom talk about batsmen playing `the lap'.

This ought to make anyone dabbling in cricket lexicography very cautious. But the new Language of Cricket is part of a series, with companion volumes on horse racing, fly-fishing, theatre and whisky. One suspects Mr. Eddowes was not entirely happy with the brief, because he has come up with a curious, hybrid book.

There is a lengthy introduction, which has gained some publicity, arguing that the origins of cricket have been misreported. Creag – recorded in 1300 and long assumed to be primitive cricket – was a dicing game, Eddowes suggests: cricket was brought from northern France and Flanders, up to three centuries later, possibly by soldiers. His range of evidence is impressive, and he may have a scoop.

But the thing is so densely written that it is hard to tell, and the reader may be disinclined to try. It is a strange entrance to a book that ought to make the game clearer and simpler.

And the business end – entries for cricketing words from `accept' to `zat' (short for `howzat') – is a failure. Sometimes he defines, sometimes not, so it is unclear whether he is attempting a dictionary. He does not really have a good enough ear. He picks up nonce words that journalists have used at odd times for odd reasons and lists them as cricketing terms. The fact that the Wandsworth Borough News once called a low catch an `ankler', and Mark Nicholas used the darts term `oche' as a metaphor, does not make them part of cricket's language.

And Eddowes keeps getting things wrong. He misses the point about `barrack'– which means to jeer in England, but to shout support in Australia. He does not explain, despite three separate entries, that `the devil's number' (87) is an Australian superstition and `Nelson' (111) an English one. `Cannon' comes from billiards; `nutmeg' from football. Everyone knows that, unless they rely on Eddowes.

He defines `filth' as slow bowling. I define it as slow bowling of no merit. Does Shane Warne bowl filth? `Bill's mother's' (as in `Is it going to rain?'`Looks black over Bill's mother's …') is not a term exclusive to Old Trafford; it was used in the Northamptonshire village where I grew up by a lady who had never been within 100 miles of Old Trafford.

The entry for `death bowler' does not mention the end of a one-day innings. The entry on `Tests' refers to 1861 and does not mention, never mind explain, the convention that they began in 1877. To cap it all, Eddowes talks about `Wisden's Almanac'. It has been Wisden rather than Wisden's since 1938; Almanack not Almanac since 1864. I could go on, believe me.

You don't have to be a pedant to expect pedantry from your lexicographers, especially when they are subsidised by the Arts Council. The speculation on the origins of the game may well stimulate future historians. But for all other purposes the book is best binned. WJ Lewis deserved a better successor.

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