Tom Stoppard was born in Zlin, Czechoslovakia, in 1937, and came to England in 1946. His major plays include Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), and Travesties (1974). Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and Professional Foul were first performed in 1977. Night and Day came out in 1978, The Real Thing in 1982, Arcadia in 1993, and The Invention of Love in 1997. His trilogy, The Coast of Utopia—comprising the plays Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage—opened in 2002. In 1998, he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for Shakespeare in Love. He lives in London, and quite likes cricket.

—Adam Thirlwell

NOTES ON CRICKET IN AMERICAN

In cricket there are two eleven-man teams. Each is given a single innings (there is no “inning” in cricket; it is always plural, like pants or scissors), or sometimes two, at bat. While one side bats, the other bowls at them.

The batting team has only two men on the pitch at any one time—a striker and a non-striker. They stand at opposite ends of the field, on a line called the “popping crease.” Any one of the eleven fielders may serve as the bowler; he retires this role to a teammate after six balls have been delivered. The bowler starts on the far side of the pitch from the striker, and bowls to him. The striker tries to hit the ball. If he does, the two batters may attempt to run (they don’t have to) across the field and reach the opposite popping crease. If both reach the crease, a point is scored.

The bowling side is trying to get the batting side out, which is done, usually, in one of five ways: (a) the bowler hits the striker’s wicket with the ball after the striker misses a hit (a wicket is a small wooden structure made up of three posts and two crosspieces, or bails; one of the bails must be dislodged to achieve an out); (b) the bowler hits some part of the batsman’s body with the ball when, had the batsman not been there, the ball would have hit and broken the wicket; (c) a fielder catches the ball from the batsman before it hits the ground; (d) a run out—a fielder breaking a wicket with the ball while no batsman is behind that wicket’s popping crease, which puts the nearest batsman out; and (e) a stumping, which occurs when a batsman misses the ball, steps outside his crease, and the wicket-keeper (a sort of catcher—he stands...