Quietly played cricket, say, outside, with some soldiers and a policeman (9)
I believe the answer is:
inspector
'a policeman' is the definition.
(I know that inspector is a type of policeman)
'quietly played cricket say outside with some soldiers' is the wordplay.
'quietly played' becomes 'p' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'cricket say' becomes 'insect' (cricket is an example).
'outside' means one lot of letters goes inside another (some letters go outside others).
'with' says to put letters next to each other.
'some soldiers' becomes 'or' (military abbreviation for other ranks).
'p' going into 'insect' is 'inspect'.
'inspect'+'or'='INSPECTOR'
'and' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for inspector that I've seen before include "Lestrade for instance" , "Police officer" , "bluebottle!" , "one to check" , "Person whose job it is to examine efficiency as in schools" .)