"leg before wicket"

[George Thompson]

This expression, being an "L" word (in the "eg before wicket" family, to
recollect Sesame Street), falls just before the cycle of regeneration the
OED is undergoing.
Still, the entry is odd.  The first citation (1774) establishes that the
ploy was against the rule, but doesn't use the words; the second (1795)
isn't []ed, but seems not to use the word, anyway, though it does show that
the abbreviation "lbw" was current then.  So the earliest appearance of the
fully spelled out prhrase comes from 1850.  Ant the 4th citation is also the
source for the 1795 citation.

OED:
leg, sense 6, Cricket,
  *a.* leg before wicket: the act of stopping with the leg, or other part of
the person, a straight-pitched ball, which would otherwise have hit the
wicket (a fault in play for which the batsman may be given ‘out’). Also,
simply, leg before. Abbreviated *l.b.w*.
 [1774    *Laws Cricket* in Lillywhite *Cricket
Scores<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/107003?rskey=hqTt6o&result=4&isAdvanced=true>
* (1862) I. 17   Or if a striker puts his leg before the wicket with a
design to stop the ball, and actually prevent the ball from hitting his
wicket by it [he is out].]
 1795    in Lillywhite *Cricket
Scores<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/107003?rskey=hqTt6o&result=4&isAdvanced=true>
* (1862) I. 190   Hon. J. Tufton, lbw, b wells…3.
 1850    ‘Bat’ *Cricketer's
Man.<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/107003?rskey=hqTt6o&result=4&isAdvanced=true>
* 47   The hitter is given out as‥‘leg before wicket’.
 1862    Lillywhite *Cricket
Scores<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/107003?rskey=hqTt6o&result=4&isAdvanced=true>
* I. 191   In this match [in 1795], ‘leg before wicket’ is found *scored* for
the first time.
 1882    *Daily
Tel.<http://ezproxy.library.nyu.edu:31797/view/Entry/107003?rskey=hqTt6o&result=4&isAdvanced=true>
* 20 May,   Blackham was out leg before to Lillywhite.


The following was turned up the old-fashioned way, by reading the newspaper.
 But checking several databases of old newspapers doesn't show anything
earlier:

     A Challenge. THIRTEEN Americans or Europeans, challenge any equal
number of native Georgians, to play the game of cricket.  ***  No legs
before wickets.
     New-York Gazette & General Advertiser, March 18, 1801, p. 3, col. 2,
"from a Savannah paper"
Oddly, the N-YG&GA prints this as if an advertisement, not as something the
editor saw in a Savannah paper and reprinted as likely to be found amusing
or interesting by NYC readers.

Cricket was a popular game in NYC at this time.

GAT
-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

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