The cricket field has many weird names that apparently sound funny but have meanings. For example, a cow corner. Why would a modern cricket field have something like a cow corner! Notably, the sport of cricket started in the late 16th century as a children’s game. The first universally accepted written mention of cricket (spelled "creckett") comes from a 1598 court case in Guildford, Surrey, where a coroner testified that he and his school friends had played the game around 1550. Adults adopted the sport in the 17th century as the first reference of it comes in 1611 with two Sussex men were prosecuted for playing the game on a Sunday instead of going to church. The game got an organized structure in 1744 when the first formal “laws of Cricket”, and later amended in 1744 to include innovations like the middle stump and the leg before wicket (LBW) rule. : The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was founded in 1787 and quickly became the custodian and definitive authority on the Laws of Cricket, a role it maintains to this day. It was a British Sport early, before the British Empire spread it globally, playing the first international match between the United States and Canada. he first official Test match, the highest standard of international cricket, took place between England and Australia in Melbourne in 1877. With cricket spreading from English villages to global arenas, the game modernised—but its language did not. While today’s batters train with biomechanics and match-ups are decided by data, the field still features names borrowed from farms and folklore. Here are three of the odd fielding position names in a cricket field 1 | The cow corner: Where is the cow in the field? Well, there are lot of theories that surfaced regarding that one spot between the long-on and the deep mid-wicket. Notably, that particular field was never a busy part of the ground when the sport first started. Rather a batter should really be so bad with the techniques that the ball might get hit there. Thus, many used to mockingly say that cows can graze there, because of the inactivity of the corner. The other belief was a cow shot- a powerful but ungainly cross-batted slog, likened to a farmer’s scythe swing, gave rise to the term “cow corner.” However, an explanation from Dulwich College has pastoral roots. It said that playing fields often used to be adjacent to or shared with livestock grazing land. Even though it stopped existing over time, the name stayed. With the evolution of T20 cricket, the cow corner became one of the busiest corners, and captains place the most athletic fielders there. Batters like Glenn Maxwell and Liam Livingstone frequently slaughter at that position. 2 | Long Stop There was a time when Jasprit Bumrah used to be shielded behind the keeper for not being athletic enough in his early days. However, this used to be one of the useful spots in cricket in the early days. Notably, unlike modern-day wicketkeepers, they had no guards on their bodies. Thus they had chances to miss the ball on unpredictable pitches. In those early days, a long stop would back up the keeper, prevent extra runs from byes, and gather balls that escaped the keeper’s reach. With the evolution of the game and improvements in wicket-keeping techniques, the long stop position isn’t a necessary position. However, recently in the 2025 Anderson Tendulkar Trophy, Jofra Archer wanted a Long Stop to handle Washington Sundar. Harry Brook, at the Long Stop, took Sundar’s catch off a pull-shot from the top edge of a bat. 3 | Third man In cricket, the third man is that quiet figure loitering on the off side, usually somewhere behind the slip cordon and the wicketkeeper, angled just enough to catch the ball that nobody else claims. He doesn’t shout much, doesn’t dive often, but when the batter nicks one fine, he suddenly becomes the most important man on the field. But why third man? Who were the first two? The name comes from cricket’s early days, when fielding wasn’t mapped with geometry or analytics. Behind the batter stood the wicketkeeper, then the slips, forming a human safety net. When edges began sneaking past this cordon, captains stationed an extra fielder even deeper—almost as insurance. He wasn’t meant to attack the ball, just to clean up the mess. Naturally, he became the “third” man in line behind the bat. Over time, his job became specialised. In Test cricket, third man often patrols the boundary, waiting patiently to stop edges from racing away for four. In limited-overs formats, especially during powerplays, he creeps inside the circle, cutting singles and watching modern batters toy with deflections and ramps.