Both "play" and "playing" is correct here. People often see him (who is) playing basketball on the playground at the weekend. People often see him (who) play basketball on the playground at the weekend. So essentially both carry the same meaning.
Played myself in scrabble. I won! What is the difference between playing with someone and playing someone? What if someone is replaced with the speaker themselves? Is the sentence in the quote cor...
He had been playing for two hours. In the absence of any mention of such a subsequent event, this use of a past perfect continuous construction would be at best unusual, and arguably simply wrong.
The main point of the question is the difference between the tenses of "have been playing" and "have played". In addition to the tenses, we have the verb "play (tennis)", which is a dynamic verb (dynamic verbs have duration; they occur over time), and we also have the time phrase "for five years".
A smile involves more than one's lips --- it includes the whole face. In fact, the lips are often the last facial feature involved. So a smile playing about one's lips is a smile happening around the mouth, and probably starting to affect the mouth. It's the beginning of a smile, a smile threatening to break full on to someone's face.
1 "I have been playing tennis for five years" uses the present perfect progressive (also known as "present perfect continuous") tense. It means that I continuously played tennis for the past five years and continue to play tennis in the present.
I was playing hockey. You could use it as a way to say "No" when invited to play a game or a match or something similar. For example: Want to play a game of chess? I just played. Give me an hour to recharge my brain. If you say, "I was just playing" it means that you were just kidding around about whatever the topic of the conversation is. For ...
All I know about "NO" is like this. There are no movies playing on Christmas day. =>There are not any movies playing on Christmas day. =>We won't be showing any movies on Christmas ...
I think that "on the field" and "in the field" are often used rather interchangeably in such contexts, with limited regard for what kind of field it is. If it is actually a totally undeveloped meadow, "on the field" seems less likely, but in informal speech might still be used.
