B: Bargain

The history of all sport is festooned with tales of money wastefully splurged on unfulfilled talents, but also with incredible bargains scooped from the discount shelves of the sporting supermarket. In the inaugural IPL, Shaun Marsh added his name to the latter list. Little suggested that Marsh would be such a success in the first IPL season - an unimposing one-day strike-rate of 75, a price tag of a mere $30,000, and, more significantly, his DNA - son of Geoff, who can be, and has been, scientifically proven to be one of cricket's dullest ever batsmen. For the same money, the Kings XI Punjab could have bought themselves a smart new kitchen, or a one-bedroom flat in a not-especially desirable part of Glasgow, or a reasonably impressive collection of vintage lawn mowers, or 40 pedigree Labrador puppies to train up as a between-innings entertainment troupe, or 15,000 bottles of Bulgarian Cabernet Sauvignon, or even a life-size bronze statue of Shaun Marsh. Instead, they got the real Shaun Marsh, and with it, 600 runs at an average of 68 and a strike-rate of close to 140 - an orange-cap-winning performance suggesting that his mother must be a devastating attacking batswoman.

B: Big shot

(a) A piece of batting that pleases an IPL franchise owner, (b) An IPL franchise owner

I: Icon player

(a) One of the crown jewels of Indian cricket. (b) Someone who attempts to hit the ball with a small painting of Jesus instead of a bat.

G: Grinder

A once-powerful cricketing species, now fearing for its very existence. The limited time span of Twenty20 reduces many of the glorious possibilities of cricket, and what it absolutely rules out is the vigil, the heroic rearguard, and the interminable crease occupation of the average hunter. Some may not mourn the grinder's fallen value in the cricketing market, but can you truly appreciate a Botham without a Tavare at the other end demonstrating just how difficult top-level run-scoring really is?

U: Umpiring

The IPL extravaganza gives umpires plenty of opportunity to go to town with their signals. Umpires have long devoted much attention to perfecting their own distinctive means of despatching batsmen to the pavilion - the Bowden crook, the Koertzen slow elevator, the Bucknor cogitated nod of doom, the Harper randomiser - and some, such as Bowden, now devote equal research and development resources to their boundary signals and requests for video assistance. It is to be hoped that the glitzy razzmatazz of the IPL can bring added excitement to cricket's less glamorous signals - the bye, the wide, the short run, and in particular the dead ball, are in dire need of some 21st-century choreography, or the viewing public will lose interest. A proposal for umpires to be accompanied by scantily-attired stilt-walkers when signalling leg byes has been shelved until next year.

W: White Mischief Girls

The Bangalore Royal Challengers' female division are the ultimate in 21st century global sport - a team of American cheerleaders shaking their shakeables for an Indian cricket team in a tournament in South Africa. According to a press release, the White Mischief Girls promise that, with their "necklines plunging, hemlines rising, they are all set to let the mercury soar, higher than any of the sixes that come from the blades of Kevin Pietersen." (This also suggests that Pietersen's latest innovation is a multi-bladed bat, or perhaps multiple bats swung from his many mighty limbs - the Laws of cricket do not stipulate that the batsman may only use one bat, after all, a loophole that a forward thinker such as Pietersen will surely exploit.) It is not specified how the WMGs will let the mercury soar - it could be that they will transmit a dose of flu to the crowd, then prevent medical staff from providing appropriate medication, or that they will light a bonfire on the outfield - but what is certain is that they have been "specially trained in flirty acrobatic skills". Most experts in the science of seduction had previously assumed that it was impossible to be simultaneously flirty and acrobatic - the batted eyelid and whispered come-on have traditionally been nullified if the flirter is in the middle of a quadruple somersault between two trapezes. Good luck to the WMGs for attempting to unify these two great art forms.

B: Baseball

A game of Twenty20 takes roughly the same time as a baseball game, so owners and players alike will soon start taking envious glances at the US Major Leagues, and in particular their 162-game season. That is 11½ times as many games... so (according to Newton's Theory Of The Impossibility Of Sporting Overkill) it would mean 11½ times as much money. Quite how the ICC Future Tours program would fit into this schedule is unclear - perhaps by having teams playing three simultaneous matches against each other on adjoining pitches in order to complete a full Test series in five days. Other innovations from baseball that Twenty20 cricket should be considering include: nine-innings matches; only allowing balls hit in the V between extra cover and midwicket to count for runs; bigger bellies; professionalised expectoration; and on-field running-between-the-wickets coaches to call "Yes", "No", "Wait", "Get back", "Sorry" and "What part of 'no' were you struggling to understand?".

S: Silly shot

A sensible shot. The forward defensive, for example, has built its worldwide reputation by being a sensible shot. In Twenty20, however, it has become a silly shot, whilst stepping to the off side and flipping the ball off middle stump towards fine leg has experienced the opposite reversal, from silly to sensible. Similarly, the good-length ball on off stump is in danger of becoming a loose delivery. Truly, we live in a world of flux.

A: Auction

The IPL, amongst its various innovations, has brought a welcome touch of the agricultural market to cricket with its revolutionary player auction. The unusual sight of the world's leading cricketers being paraded around like farm animals, having their haunches prodded and teeth checked by a franchise owner to see if they are potentially breedable Twenty20 stars, has added something both exciting and disturbing to the world of top-level cricket. Under the terms of Kevin Pietersen's contract with Bangalore Royal Challengers, if his two-week IPL stint is successful, he could be put out to stud to sire a lucrative future generation of Twenty20 stars.

P: Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen attracts media attention like a plump zebra attracts lion attention in a lion enclosure. Sometimes, admittedly, the zebra has been known to smear itself in an irresistible wildebeest ketchup to make itself even tastier, but even if Pietersen keeps a low profile and just focuses on his game, someone in the media will conjure up a story about him, publish it, and then criticise him for being in the media spotlight so much. In the build-up to his IPL debut, everything conspired to make Pietersen even bigger news than his $1.55 million price tag - the tournament being moved to South Africa, his team having a South African coach, his return to captaincy after a brief and bumpy ride as England skipper, and a first-match clash with old friend and adversary Shane Warne. Pietersen may only be spending two weeks in the IPL, but he will surely generate more column inches than, say, Munaf Patel manages in the whole tournament. Then, as surely as chalk follows cheese, Jacques Kallis takes over as the Royal Challengers captain.