Word.ws English Dictionary

nervous nineties

nervous nineties noun: the set of individual scores between 90 and 99, when a batsman may play badly due to feeling pressure to convert the score into a century.

Noun

nervous nineties pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) The set of individual scores between 90 and 99, when a batsman may play badly due to feeling pressure to convert the score into a century.
    • I have never found anything particularly significant in the term nervous nineties for I firmly believe that a batsman should treat every ball on its merits, be his score 9 or 90.2011, Michael Vaughan, Year In The Sun
    • Watson nearly fell again in the nervous nineties when Bresnan took an overhead catch at long off when the all-rounder was on 90 but the fieldsman tumbled over the rope and a six was declared.2013, Chris Barrett, “Shane Watson belts brutal century as George Bailey sets record against James Anderson”, in The Sydney Morning Herald

Questions about nervous nineties

What does nervous nineties mean?
Nervous nineties means the set of individual scores between 90 and 99, when a batsman may play badly due to feeling pressure to convert the score into a century.
What part of speech is nervous nineties?
Nervous nineties is a noun.

Words near nervous nineties in the dictionary

  1. nervous hit
  2. nervous hits
  3. nervous nellie
  4. nervous nellies
  5. nervous nelly
  6. nervous nineties
  7. nervous pudding
  8. nervous Purvis
  9. nervous Purvises
  10. nervous system
  11. nervous systems

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nervous nineties (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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