Two of the seven clues in CricketGuessr — role and bowling style — describe what a cricketer actually does on the field. If you already follow the game, they read instantly. If you don't, an orange "close" on a wicketkeeper guess or a green on "Spin" can feel arbitrary. This page explains what each role and bowling style means in real cricket, and then maps that meaning onto exactly how CricketGuessr groups them — so the colours stop being mysterious and start being information.

The four player roles

Every cricketer in the game is tagged with one of four roles. In real cricket these aren't rigid boxes — plenty of players do a bit of everything — but each describes a player's primary job in the side.

Here is the part that trips up newcomers. CricketGuessr doesn't score role on a simple match/no-match basis — it uses three role groups. Batsman and Wicketkeeper both belong to the batting group; All-rounder is its own allround group; and Bowler is the bowling group. So if you guess a Batsman and the mystery player is a Wicketkeeper, the role cell turns orange (close), not gray — because both are batting roles. The logic is faithful to the sport: a wicketkeeper-batsman and a pure batsman do nearly the same job with the bat, so the game tells you you're warm. When you see that orange, stop guessing top-order batsmen and switch to keeper-batsmen from the same country or team.

Batting style: right-hand vs left-hand

Batting style records which way a player faces the bowler: Right-hand bat (RHB) or Left-hand bat (LHB). It refers to the batting stance, not which hand the person writes with — many natural right-handers bat left-handed and vice versa. The split matters tactically because left-handers change a bowler's angles and force fielding adjustments, and because the majority of cricketers bat right-handed.

In the game this is the simplest clue: it is purely binary, so the cell is either green (same handedness) or gray (different). There is no "close" for batting style. Because left-handers are the minority, a green on Left-hand bat narrows the field far more than a green on right-hand — it is a more valuable confirmation than people expect.

Bowling styles: pace and spin

Bowling is where the vocabulary gets richest. Every bowling action is described by two things: the arm the bowler uses (right or left) and the typeof delivery. Those types fall into two great families — pace and spin.

Pace (fast) bowling is about speed and movement through the air or off the seam. It comes in three intensities the game recognises — fast, fast-medium and medium — from the quickest express bowlers down through skiddy seamers to gentle medium-pacers. All of these, whether bowled right-arm or left-arm, belong to the same pace family.

Spin bowling is about revolutions on the ball, making it deviate sharply off the pitch at slower speeds. Spin breaks down into four named styles, and this is where most beginners get lost, so here is what each actually means:

Players who don't bowl at all are marked None — typically pure batsmen and most wicketkeepers.

How the bowling clue is scored

CricketGuessr shows you a simplified category for bowling rather than the full style: Fast, Medium, Spin, or None. Anything with "fast" in it (fast or fast-medium, either arm) shows as Fast; the medium-pacers show as Medium; all four spin styles collapse into Spin; non-bowlers show None.

But the colour logic runs on the deeper family, not the displayed category. Under the hood every style is sorted into one of two families: pace(all the fast, fast-medium and medium variants) or spin (off-break, leg-break, orthodox and chinaman). The cell turns:

• Green when your guess and the answer share the same bowling category.
• Orange (close) when they're in the same family but a different category — for example you guessed a Fast bowler and the answer is Medium. Both are pace, so the game tells you you're warm.
• Gray when the families differ entirely — pace against spin, or either against None.

So an orange bowling cell is a strong signal: you've got the pace-vs-spin question right and only need to adjust the speed. A green on Spin is also more powerful than it looks — spinners are a minority of any squad, and if you can then remember which arm and which of the four styles, you're often down to a tiny shortlist. A green on a rare style's family — left-arm wrist spin especially — can practically end the puzzle.

How this helps you guess

Once the role and bowling clues read as cricket rather than colours, your guesses get sharper. An orange role means "right family, wrong specifics" — Batsman against Wicketkeeper, so pivot to keeper-batsmen. An orange bowling cell means you've nailed pace-vs-spin and just need the right speed bracket. A green on Spin plus a left-hand bat, or a green on a scarce style, should collapse your candidate list immediately. The clues are only as useful as your understanding of what they describe — and now you have it. For how these two clues combine with country, IPL team, age and formats, head to the strategy guide.