Sticky wicket as moisture evaporates. When covers were introduced into England's County Championship, John Woodcock wrote an article for the 1981 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, criticising the move, in an article titled, "Sticky dog is put down". He added, "I cannot forbear ... from lamenting ... a part of the very heritage of English cricket – a drying pitch and a sizzling sun." In the game of croquet, the phrase "sticky wicket" may refer to a hoop (wicket) that is difficult for a ball to go through because of the narrowness of the opening. This usage is confined to the United States. An
Three acres and a cow Three acres and a cow Three acres and a cow was a slogan used by British land reform campaigners of the 1880s, and revived by the distributists of the 1920s. It refers to an ideal land holding for every citizen. The phrase was invented by Eli Hamshire in letters written to Joseph Chamberlain and Jesse Collings during the early 1880s. Hamshire did, in fact, own . Collings used the phrase as a slogan for his 1885 land reform campaign, and it became used as part of the political struggle against rural poverty. He became derisively known as "Three Acres and