Tail, tailender

The tail is usually taken to mean the last four members of the batting side - in other words those listed as coming in to bat at numbers eight, nine, ten or eleven. A tailender is one of this group. Traditionally the tail was composed of the bowlers, from whom little was expected in terms of scoring runs. With the growth of limited-overs matches expectations of tailenders' batting ability have grown and there seems to be evidence that many bowlers are taking their batting much more seriously than previously.



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