[Godefroy says ‘In the arrondissement of Vervains and of Avesnes, bail is the name of a horizontal piece of wood fixed upon two stakes.’ This is exactly the cricket bail of the last century: the origin of the Fr. is uncertain; perh. identical with the preceding word; scarcely an independent repr. of L. baculum.]
† 1. A cross bar. Obs.
1575. Turbervile, Booke of Falconrie, 358. Set them uppon some pearche or bayle of wood that they maye by that meanes the better keepe their feathers unbroken, and eschue the dragging of their traines upon the ground.
2. In Cricket, name of each of the two pieces of wood laid across the tops of the three stumps which form the wicket.
(The bails are at present made 4 inches long, turned and shaped on the lathe; but originally the wicket consisted of a single bail, two feet long, laid across two stumps.
1770. J. Love, Cricket, 19. The Bail, and mangled Stumps bestrew the Field.
1799. in Hoyle’s Games (1803), 301. The striker is out if the bail is bowled off.
1813. Sports of Childhood, Cricket 22. The Wicket consists of two pieces of wood fixed upright, and kept together by another piece, which is laid across the top and is called a Bail.
1833. Strutt, Sports & Past. (Hone), 106. Of late years the wicket consists of three stumps and two bails.
1861. Whyte-Melville, Tilb. Nogo, 167. My bails fly upwards; and … I am disagreeably conscious of being ‘bowled out.’
