It is cricket
The use of a baseball expression, backstop, for possible arrangements over the Irish border could upset some Brexiteers. Yet the concept of a ‘backstop’ can be traced to a much more British game, cricket. The use of ‘backstop’ for what we would now call a wicket keeper was first recorded in the Oxford Dictionary in 1819. Seventy years later it cropped up in baseball, as a name for a fence rather than a person. When, in 1890, baseball players started calling the catcher a backstop too, the fence became, in effect, a backstop to the backstop.
Big swims
Ross Edgley became the first person to swim round the British coast, covering 1,791 miles in four months, starting and finishing in Margate. Some other long swims:
— In 2009 the Slovenian Martin Strel swam the length of the Amazon, covering 2,045 miles in 66 days.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in