on the ball vs suss

on the ball

prep
  • Alert, active, or attentive; on top of things. 

  • Playing as a midfielder. 

  • Being in control of the ball. 

suss

adj
  • Suspicious. 

verb
  • To study or size up, to check out (examine). 

  • To discover, infer or figure out. 

noun
  • Social nous. 

  • Suspicious behaviour; the act of loitering with intent. 

How often have the words on the ball and suss occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )