Quote:

In my distant youth, I went to school in England, where I was forced to play cricket. (Like Anu, I completely lack the sports gene.) At that time, "sticky wicket" was meant literally -- when the ball (or bat or batter) brushed the wicket, and the bails trembled but failed to fall.



Bravo Steve! I was waiting for someone to zero in on the origin of this phrase. The wet ground explanation is close but not on target.

Most of the world does not know cricket. The point of hitting the ball is to have it bounce into the wickets and knock off one or two of the two bails that balance on top of them. The wicket configuration is a set of 3 parallel poles at equal height hammered into the ground like this: | | | Now imagine taking a couple sticks whose length is equal to the distance between the centers of the tops of the wicket poles: - - You rest them atop the wickets so that you get a double arch design, sort of like this but with the dashes here sitting on top of the wickets: |-|-| What actually gets 'sticky' is the wicket configuration such that when the wickets are struck by the ball, the bails on top hang onto the tops of the wickets when typically they would fall. What you have is an unpredictable, irrational, annoying situation. The sticky wicket is not cooperating with your effort to knock off the bails. And yes, ground or pitch conditions could be one cause of the failure of the ball to knock off the bails. You might also want to check if one of the opposing team has stuck his gum under the bails to tick you off.

I hope this over-explanation helps. You can see how this simple situation in cricket can be applied to much of the rest of life.