Words that are not synonyms

September 2026. Longer than a caption, shorter than a rule book. If a definition starts to sound like a playing condition, go to the document named at the end of the entry. This page is the fence between words a broadcast treats as interchangeable.

Popping crease

The line, four feet in front of the bowling crease, that a batter must make ground behind to avoid a run-out, and behind which the batter or the bat must be grounded. It is not a scoring zone and not the place a commentator means by "on the crease" as a mood. A replay that crops the line has not shown the event.

Bowling crease

The line through the stumps. The popping crease is in front of it. Mixing the two is how a lounge run-out becomes confident and wrong.

Over

Six legal deliveries. A wide and a no-ball do not count among the six. An over that felt long on television may have contained extras. The Shield daily minimum of 96 overs, restated by Cricket Australia on 25 August 2026, counts overs, not minutes. Session length and over count are different clocks.

Session, Shield 2026–27

Morning 2 hours. Lunch 40 minutes. Afternoon 2 hours 15 minutes. Tea 20 minutes. Evening 1 hour 45 minutes. An extra 30 minutes exists only to finish the 96 overs. The middle session was lengthened by 15 minutes, taken from the evening. This is not a Test session and not a day-night session. Source: cricket.com.au, Jack Paynter, 25 August 2026. The argument around the grid is on the cricket note.

Test session

Set in the ICC playing conditions for that series. A day-night Test moves the hours again. Do not reconstruct a Shield session two from a Test habit after a highlights package has cut lunch.

DLS

Duckworth–Lewis–Stern, the ICC method for resetting a target after overs are lost in a limited-overs match. A figure a commentator calls fair before the official target is an estimate. The notebook does not rerun the formula.

Powerplay

A named block of overs with a fielding restriction. It is not a moral instruction to attack, and it is not the whole innings. Comparing a powerplay over with an over after the restriction lifts, as if they were one sample, is the mistake.

Penalty runs, from 1 October 2026

In international series that start on or after that date, a batter not ready within the prescribed time draws a warning, then a final warning, then five penalty runs to the fielding side on the third and later offences. They are an award to the fielding side, not a deduction from a batter's personal score. They are not a Shield rule unless the Shield conditions adopt them. Source: ICC, 1 October 2026.

Pink ball, day Test

A trial, by agreement before the match, locked for the whole match. A worsening forecast on day three is not a new agreement. Switching from red to pink after the start is not allowed. Source: ICC, 1 October 2026.

Overthrow

An attempt to direct the ball at the stumps. A misfield, including a fumble that runs to the rope, is not an overthrow under the October clarification. The runs can still count. The category is the point.

Settled

An umpire's decision that the ball is finally dead. From 1 October 2026 it need not be in the bowler's or keeper's hands. It is not a commentator's sense that the over felt finished.

Box draw

In the NSW Greyhound Racing Rules, 2024 consolidated text, a random allocation of starting boxes. Not a rating. Random is not equal once the bend starts, because the inside path is shorter if the dog holds the rail. A scratch after the draw changes the field the time describes. Jacket colour in a photograph is the box.

Pathway time

A Greyhound Racing SA standard for a named track and distance, on the grading page, from the notice effective 13 August 2019 and still that table at this check. Not a personal best and not portable. Angle Park 515 metres is 30.32. Angle Park 530 metres is 30.96. Murray Bridge 530 metres is 30.47. Mount Gambier 512 metres is 30.34. Gawler 531 metres is 31.49. The full list is on the greyhound note.

Weighted point score

GRSA's score on the last five race starts. No age test on which starts count. Fewer than five starts and the score is pro-rata. It will add a Gawler start and a Murray Bridge straight start if both are in the five. It is not a national class and not a tipping sheet.

Grade

A local way of filling a race. An SA grade and a GBGB graded race are not the same label. In GBGB Rule 64, version noted 5 June 2026, a graded race is one the racing manager selects. An open race is advertised in the GBGB calendar. Pasting either label onto a GRSA race without the local conditions is the error.

Handicap, greyhounds

In that same GBGB rule, traps open together and some dogs start further forward by a stated number of metres. Equal clock time is not equal speed. It is not an Australian box draw.

Straight track

A race without the first-bend geometry. Murray Bridge has a straight. Early speed there is a different question from early speed at Gawler. The Pathway table keeps the distances apart. A programme increase in straight-track racing, reported in the September 2026 reform coverage, is not a property of every SA dog.

Double-arm lure

A completed SA reform item, meant to spread the field and cut crowding. Not a finding that crowding has ended, and not a finding about the injury count. A photograph of a bunch or a spread field does not audit it.

Integrity body

On 23 September 2026 Racing Minister Rhiannon Pearce said South Australia was the only state without one, and that legislation was intended next year, with no date. GRSA was still the commercial controller. An announcement is not the statute. A Gawler stewards' sentence and a GWIC sentence do not share an addressee until that body exists.

Stewards' report

A race-day record of the controlling body that wrote it. In NSW that body is the Greyhound Welfare and Integrity Commission. In SA, at this check, it is still GRSA. Injury figures in a report are that meeting's, or that year's if the outlet aggregated them. InDaily's 1,064 injured in SA last year, 316 major, five deaths, is a state window. It is not a national weekly rate.

Traceability

Reported among the completed SA reforms: a record of location, ownership and fate. It is not printed on the race card. This notebook has not queried it.

The fence

If two entries on this page can be swapped without the sentence becoming false, the entry is too abstract and should be cut. Session and Pathway time cannot be swapped. That is why they are both here.

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