Recently, during and after the cricket test series between India and Australia, the two phrases, ‘whitewash’ and ‘hang up one’s boots’ have been used very frequently in most English newspapers and the electronic media. Many people use these phrases in their casual conversations. When I asked my students to give the meaning of the word ‘whitewash’ with regards to sports, everyone knew the correct answer. We have become cricket-hungry and undoubtedly, this cricketmania controls our thinking and behaviour.
My 10-year old son asked me whether the correct expression, with a special reference to cricket, was “hang up one’s boots” or “hang up one’s bat”. He thought the expression “hang up one’s boots” could be used only to refer to retirement of professional football players. Yes, the idiomatic expression “to hang up one’s boots” means ‘to permanently stop playing a sport’ or ‘to call it a day’ or ‘to retire’. Though it primarily refers to the retirement of a professional football player, the expression is used to refer to retirement from other sports and fields too. In that case, the word ‘boots’ is replaced by another term appropriate to the retiree: gloves (boxer), bat or pads (cricketer), racquet (tennis player), microphone (broadcaster), and so on. Here are some
examples:
*David Haye, former WBA heavyweight champion, has fulfilled his long-standing promise to hang up his gloves.
*German tennis player Nicolas Kiefer, a former world number four player, has decided to hang up his racquet.
Though the meaning of the word ‘whitewash’ is to cover a substance of a wall with whitewash, the term is used informally to refer to a defeat in a sporting contest in which the loser is beaten in every match in a series. The term can be used both as a verb and a noun and is used mainly in cricket. For example:
* Australia whitewashed India in the recent test series.
* The Indian cricket team suffered a consecutive overseas whitewash.
* India’s 0-4 whitewash against Australia was a reminder for some senior players in the Indian cricket team to hang up their bats and pads n
— rayanal@yahoo.co.uk