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
A Sport and a Pastime of Autun in Burgundy. The book is generally regarded by critics as a modern classic. In "The New York Times Book Review", novelist and critic Reynolds Price wrote, "Of living novelists, none has produced a novel I admire more than "A Sport and a Pastime" ... it's as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know." The critic and biographer Adam Begley, in "The New York Times Magazine", called it "extraordinary ... The book feels utterly true." After Salter's death in 2015, the novel has continued to receive critical attention. In 2017, Sarah Hall (writing for "The Guardian") observed that: