What do you call an allrounder in club cricket?

"So what do you do? Bat, bowl?" A question to new faces that rings out across the land on pavilion steps, in sweaty changing rooms, and around the slip cradle; one that I've both posed and been asked many a time. Theoretically both interrogator and respondent have the same interest: ensuring the captain has best knowledge of the team. As a captain, you want a simple, honest answer: an objective description of abilities, calibrated to the standard of play in today's game: "I bowl seam-up, skip, normally first change, sometimes manage to bring the ball in a bit. Can swing the bat but don't expect me to hang around at the crease - normally bat eight in the Worcester League - div two, that is." Preferably an A5 printout detailing recent performances, batting and bowling averages for the last three seasons, and comprehensive assessments from two ECB-qualified coaches would be helpful.

Funnily enough, this doesn't tend to be provided. As a newcomer, you have both a desire to contribute what you can to the team, and the fear of letting the team down by conceding 34 from the final over. Better not over-egg your abilities, so there usually is, at best, a definite ruling out of one discipline: "More of a batsman, really. Don't worry about giving me a bowl, it'll end badly." More common is a weak, self-decrying suggestion of indiscriminate ineptitude across all departments - "Don't mind where I bat, can turn my arm over if you want, don't expect too much, haha… well sort of medium pace really, try and get it in the right areas…" - which, unfortunately, doesn't really help anyone, leaving the captain as much in the dark as he/she was at first. "Something of an allrounder then, eh?" says the skipper, fishing for information while trying to sound complimentary.

Oh, help. No. No. Definitely not. Allrounder is the worst possible label, implying as it does proficiency across the board - the exact opposite of the lack of talent that should be inferred. This suggestion must be rejected at all costs.

Even in the professional game, it's something of a slippery term. Take the oft-used rule of thumb of batting average exceeding bowling average. It's not a bad start, but a rigid application of the rule would exclude England's greatest Test allrounder of the last 10 years, Andrew Flintoff (batting 31.77, bowling 32.78), while bestowing the title on Alastair Cook (batting 46.77, bowling 7.00, as of January 2016). There's one thing to be said in its favour: it emphatically rules me out of the category (last season: batting 13.67, bowling 20.67).

To take another frequently used, less statistical measure: players are sometimes viewed as allrounders if they can justify their presence in the team in either discipline. That is to say, they would still be picked on the strength of solely their batting or solely their bowling. Yet leave the professional game, slide down the side of the pyramid, and down at ground level you're picking players on availability rather than capability. Justifying one's place barely comes into it. If you can get onto the field, you're in the team.

What we need is a term that reflects flexibility as to role without any implied guarantee as to fitness for purpose, or indeed general fitness. Unfortunately, despite its bewilderingly rich vocabulary, cricket doesn't seem to have a term that conjures up the right mix of keenness and incompetence. So we band of brothers unencumbered by talent, what nomenclature can we command? A "bits-and-pieces player" seems to be a term in the right area - especially if that refers to falling to bits and going to pieces.

Self-deprecation is here to stay, so we might as well embrace it. What about "no-rounder"? No one could be in any doubt that this isn't complimentary. Unfortunately it also suggests a certain tightfistedness at the bar, which I have condemned elsewhere at length. For that reason - and also the soaring negativity that sails across the boundary dividing self-deprecation from indulgent false modesty - I'm not sold on this term.

Nor am I on my next possible term, "all-sounder". Not only does it sound contrived, it calls to mind a braying loudmouth whose inability is only matched by his inanity. Every team either has one - in which case they bear collective responsibility for failing to shut him up - or has played against one. This poor player struts and frets his hour upon the field and then, mercifully, is heard no more - or at least until the next time you're playing his team.

"Run-rounder" is a little more positive. It's immediately obvious that this person can't be faulted for effort - always happy, nay eager, to hare from fine leg to fine leg for 50 overs, haul the boundary rope in, collect match fees, umpire at square leg, bowl sixth change against the 130-not-out opener, and generally perform any other thankless task. The energy and enthusiasm implied by this term, though, prevents it being applied to more than a handful of players.

To my final neologism, then: "rough-rounder". Clear though it may be that this player is far from a honed cricket machine, there is also the hint - only a hint - of latent ability, which may or may not be visible on any given day. It's vague enough to cover young hopefuls, moulding their raw talents in the crucible of the wettest summer on record; middle-aged "haven't-played-since-school" dark horses who unexpectedly reveal stunning cover drives; and grizzled league workhorses who make up what they lack in speed with more guile than Blackadder.

A rough-rounder comes with no guarantees, but might just do the job - both as a term and on the field. To take a step back, though - as someone or other once commented, what's in a name? An allrounder by any other name would strike as sweet. Or something close to that.