We all know them, we've all overused them; here are some of the worst

Cricket is a complex game, whatever Shane Warne would have you believe. Sage observers have bits of cricket "wisdom" on which they lean, stock responses to certain scenarios that can be hammered out like a monotonous line and length. Warne likes to say, "If it seams, it spins", which actually isn't too bad (assuming a bit of grip on the surface) and works as a canny bit of self-promotion for any young spinner.

There are plenty of others, vestigial nuggets that cling to the underside of the game like barnacles. "Never run on a misfield" was probably sound advice when a gentle push to cover was never likely to escape very far, but it makes less sense when pressuring fielders into a mistake is standard T20 batsmanship. "Catches win matches" is well meaning, but as Pakistan have ably demonstrated over the years, it doesn't really cover other, more direct ways of taking wickets.

Yorkers are the answer

One old saw that has really begun to grate is the idea that modern death bowlers neglect the yorker. "Why haven't they bowled any yorkers?" bellows the indignant fan/commentator, as another slow half-tracker gets pumped to the fence. Never mind that, as Ben Stokes recently found out, an errant yorker is among the costliest balls to deliver to a batsman with half an inkling that it is coming - it is still referred to, as Jarrod Kimber noted recently, as a "magic cure-all ball" by people who seem "almost oblivious to modern cricket's evolution".

"Catches win matches" is well meaning, but as Pakistan have ably demonstrated over the years, it doesn't really cover other, more direct ways of taking wickets

The problem lies in how easily interchangeable "yorker" is with "half-volley" and "full toss" against batsmen shimmying back and forth in the crease. So unless the demand is for "laser-guided toe-crushers delivered with the consistency of an automaton", we might have to accept that yorkers are not always the answer.

The corridor of uncertainty

Unsurprisingly, given how they attempt to be evocative, informative and brimming with insight, while at the same time sounding like they are conducting a matey chat, commentators have become the high priests of cricketing cliché. Across three formats, ever-evolving technology and a non-stop schedule, certain sermons have begun to sound dated. Just take a flick through the Book of Shastri.

Where Ravi Shastri lives: down the bottom of yon corridor © Getty Images

Few phrases are more ingrained in cricket's psyche than the "corridor of uncertainty", which even has its own Wikipedia entry. Geoffrey Boycott's claim to have coined the term during England's tour of the West Indies in 1989-90 is hard to verify, but what is not in doubt is that it has gradually spread like an invasion of cane toads. The C of E is an institution in decline, but the C of U has become an article of faith.

That doesn't mean it is inviolate, of course. According to Damien Fleming, Sir Richard Hadlee disliked it so much he wanted to ban it, prompting the "Bowlologist" to come up with his own, equally annoying, alternatives. But then, I've also been guilty of that on ball-by-ball commentary; after all, it is such a handy formulation for the channel outside off stump. The late journalist Alistair Cooke once wrote: "I have nothing against clichés. Most of them are true, though you have to live through the denial of them to know it." So perhaps we have to give Geoffrey his due here.

See also: crucial first hour, tricky third innings, being prepared to lose to win.

Brand of cricket

Players too have their favourite crutches when talking about the game. Or at least when talking to the media. While there are plenty of articulate cricketers, just as many will fall back on "executing skills" in order to hit the "right areas" and then take it "one ball at a time" when faced with a microphone.

My own preference would be to hear less about how "Test cricket is dying". We're all dying, and going on about it won't change things

The worst of these regurgitated sound bites is the increasingly ubiquitous "brand of cricket". Recently England have fallen hard for playing an "attacking brand of cricket" and Eoin Morgan, the limited-overs captain, might as well be selling it from the back of the team bus, so often does he invoke the term. If you thought the appropriate word here really ought to be "style" and that a brand of cricket was Gray-Nicolls, then you really have some catching up to do (perhaps on a brand awareness course).

Eoin Morgan: brand ambassador © Getty Images

A preferred method of play is clearly not synonymous with "a type of product manufactured by a particular company under a particular name". So whom do we blame for this linguistic no-ball? Well, a quick Google search coughs up the "History of Australian cricket" Wikipedia page quite near the top, as well as plenty of references to an "Australian brand of cricket". And here is Darren Lehmann on taking over as coach in 2013: "The team is going to play in a certain way. We are going to play an aggressive brand of cricket that entertains people and fans and gets the job done." Come to think of it, England are now coached by an Australian too.

I think that's fairly conclusive. We can blame the men with their brand down under.

National stereotypes

Having strayed into petty jingoism, I should now offer an apology and draw back. It ought not to be surprising that a "global" game with such strong colonial roots still relies on outdated notions for its favoured imagery. CLR James once wrote of "racialism in cricket", and if we have come some way from this position, it is clear that a strong strain of nationalism remains.

War minus the shooting, and all that, I suppose, but perhaps we can do away with the casual stereotyping that seems to be more prevalent in cricket than in most other sports? The fact that there are only a few top-level international teams has given rise to bad habits and allowed certain national characteristics - often ascribed decades ago - to become lazy shorthand for actual description. The English are "whingeing Poms"; West Indies play "calypso cricket"; skilful batsmen have "Indian wrists"; New Zealand are always "dark horses"; Pakistan are predictably "mercurial".

Across three formats, ever-evolving technology and a non-stop schedule, certain sermons have begun to sound dated. Just take a flick through the Book of Shastri

These reductive tropes are not worthy of a game full of nuance and complexity. Jos Buttler's wrists could be sponsored by MRF and Virat Kohli can out-sledge most Australians. West Indies are now more likely to put on a show of "apocalypso cricket" - the end is nigh for someone. And in the last year or so, England have become limited-overs wild cards, while Pakistan enhanced their Test record under the pragmatic Misbah-ul-Haq. Stereotype that (or don't).

Test cricket is dying

We have trawled an ocean of received wisdom and hackneyed comment but all of the above was mere plankton compared to cricket's great white whales, the monolithic shibboleths submerged below the surface that combine existentialism, morality, myth-making and… sorry, I'm getting carried away. But this is a sport so well documented and fretted about that its fundamental concerns quickly become institutionalised.

State-of-the-game debates come back around time and again. The concept of that which is "not cricket" has already been thoroughly debunked; more recent is the idea that "T20 is ruining technique", when in fact it is more accurate to say it is changing it.

Fans have been driven to somnolence by repeated proclamations that Test cricket is the pinnacle © Getty Images

When it comes to the big numbers, my own preference would be to hear less about how "Test cricket is dying". Well, we're all dying, and going on about it won't change things. Moreover, it feels like people have been making this prediction for quite some time. In 1938, for instance, Wisden was moved to express concern about the possibility of a "serious decline in the popularity of Test match cricket"; in the 1995 edition, Matthew Engel proposed a World Test Championship to provide context and prevent dwindling crowds. Twenty years on, that particular can is still being kicked down the road.

The fact is, in 2015 (a World Cup year), there were 43 Tests played - three more than in 1995, slightly down from a turn-of-millennium (pre-T20) peak. In a couple of years, Ireland hope to become the 11th Test nation. Reports of Test cricket's demise feel somewhat exaggerated.

In one of his final pieces, for the Nightwatchman, Mike Marqusee tried to fathom cricket's appeal: "It keeps its own, archaic kind of time. Test cricket, in particular, defies the appetite for instant gratification, offering instead something that matures and acquires depth along the way." My bet is that Tests will be keeping their own, joyous "archaic kind of time" for some time yet.

Alan Gardner is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @alanroderick

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