Down by six is literally that — they were six runs (points) behind. Six is a "magic" number, because that's what you score for knocking the ball out of the park (so the cricket equivalent to hitting a home run).

Yup, batter runs towards the bowler (and the "inactive" batter runs the opposite direction).

In baseball terms, a cricket run is more or less equivalent to running a single base (the bowler is 22 yards away from the batter, which is more than the distance from the pitcher's mound to the home plate, but less than the distance from home to first base). Just like you can run multiple bases in baseball, you can do multiple runs in cricket. From a scoring point of view, you're effectively scoring how many bases you ran, so a baseball run is roughly equivalent to four cricket runs.

Scoring 100+ runs is called "a century", and it's pretty impressive, but, because you keep batting until the bowling team sends you out, you can just keep scoring all day long if you have the endurance for it. Baseball doesn't have a mechanism for a single batter to hit multiple back-to-back home runs.

There's a rope around the field, if the ball goes over it without hitting the ground (like a home run) it counts for 6. If if it did hit the ground it counts for 4.

They can run more than one (get to the other side, turn around, run back, etc) but the chance of the wicket you're running to being hit with the ball (so you're out) becomes larger so they usually manage 1, sometimes 2 or even 3. And both batters have to run the same amount.

If the number of runs is even, they end up on the same side as they started from.

> The rest of us know it only for its impenetrable jargon ("They've risked a woggle on the silly midden!")

You’re thinking of the fielding position “silly point,” so named because the chances of getting knocked out by the ball to the face are so high you’d be silly to stand there.

By “midden” you might be thinking of “maiden,” which is a bowler competing a “maiden over” by completing their 6 balls without conceding a run. An over is just a block of play consisting of 6 balls before switching bowlers.

It’s not as impenetrable as it first sounds, it just needs a bit of time to watch. Most sports have some jargon (offside anyone?)

> Not even the whole of the UK - really only England and Wales

"Only" England & Wales ... which is ~90% of the UK population. It's a fair generalisation in a casual context like this.

We get it, cricket isn't wildly popular in Northern Ireland (nor Scotland). Why chastise the parent for suggesting it is?

But come on - don't shoehorn an indirect political point into a casual conversation.

And as if cricket was unique in having jargon? Hurling doesn't have jargon? Gaelic football? Football? Of course they do.