The story of cricket

Cricket has once again come alive with the ICC Champions Trophy Mini World Cup Tournament now being played in India. The other day I was watching the Sri Lanka vs New Zealand encounter when someone in the room asked me whether I was aware of the origin of cricket.

The question took me by surprise. I really didn't know. In the next few days, I took some time to check with cricket historians and cricket museums for facts and figures. Their responses came fast. The revelations were quite interesting.

Origin of cricket

The origins of cricket, it seems, lie somewhere in the Dark Ages - probably after the Roman Empire, almost certainly before the Normans invaded England in 1066, and almost certainly somewhere in Northern Europe.


Melbourne Cricket Ground Boxing Day Test 1998. Photo by Paddy Briggs.

All research concedes that the game derived from a very old, widespread and uncomplicated pastime by which one player served up an object, be it a small piece of wood or a ball, and another hit it with a suitably fashioned club.

How and when this club-ball game developed into one where the hitter defended a target against the thrower is simply not known. Nor is there any evidence as to when points were awarded dependent upon how far the hitter was able to dispatch the missile; nor when helpers joined the two-player contest, thus beginning the evolution into a team game; nor when the defining concept of placing wickets at either end of the pitch was adopted.

What is agreed by everybody is that by Tudor times (16th c.) cricket had evolved far enough from club-ball to be recognizable as the game played today; that it was well established in many parts of Kent, Sussex and Surrey; that within a few years it had become a feature of leisure time at a significant number of schools; and - a sure sign of the wide acceptance of any game - that it had become popular enough among young men to earn the disapproval of local magistrates.

Name of cricket

No one knows how the name of "cricket" derived. A number of words are thought to be possible sources for the term cricket, which could refer to the bat or the wicket. In old French, the word criquet meant a kind of club which probably gave its name to croquet.


The evolution of the cricket bat from the early curved bat in 16th century

Some believe that cricket and croquet have a common origin. In Flemish, krick(e) means a stick, and, in Old English, cricc or cryce means a crutch or staff (though the hard "k" sound suggests the North or Northeast midlands, rather than the Southeast, where cricket seems to have begun).

Alternatively, the French criquet apparently comes from the Flemish word krickstoel, which is a long low stool on which one kneels in church which may appear similar to the long low wicket with two stumps used in early cricket, or the early stool in stoolball.

The word stool is old Sussex dialect for a tree stump, and stool ball is a sport similar to cricket played by the Dutch.

References

Despite many prior suggested references, the first definite reference to the game is found in a 1597 court case concerning dispute over a school's ownership of a plot of land. A 59-year old coroner, John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played kreckett on the site 50 years earlier.


The cricket match in the 18th century in North London. This picture by Francis Hayman (1708 -1786) hangs in the museum at Lord’s cricket ground. Note the two stump wicket, the rough shape of the bat and the stick on which umpire is marking the runs.

The school was the Royal Grammar School, Guildford, and Mr Derrick's account proves beyond reasonable doubt that the game was being played in Surrey in 1550. Another reference to cricket being played as an adult sport was in 1611, when two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church.

A number of references occur up to the English Civil War and these indicate that it had become an adult game contested by parish teams, but there is no evidence of county strength teams at this time. It is generally believed, therefore, that "village cricket" had developed by the middle of the 17th century but that county cricket had not and that investment in the game had not begun.

A number of important dates in cricket history follow:

1598 - Cricket mentioned in Florio's Italian-English dictionary.

1610 - Reference to "cricketing" between Weald and Upland near Kent.

1624 - Jasper Vinall becomes first man known to be killed playing cricket: hit by a bat while trying to catch the ball - in Sussex.

1676 - First reference to cricket being played abroad, by British residents in Syria.

1697 - First reference to "a great match" with 11 players a side for fifty guineas, in Sussex.

1709 - First recorded inter-county match: Kent v Surrey.

MCC

Marylebone Cricket Club was founded in 1787 - a fact gathered from a poster for a cricket match in 1837 announcing MCC's Golden jubilee. Before then, however, aristocrats and noblemen played their cricket in White Conduit Fields at Islington, London.


A memorial to the game of cricket by Hambledon Cricket Club in late 1700s. Note wicket has only two stumps.

Like shooting and foxhunting, cricket was considered a manly sport for the elite - with plenty of gambling opportunities to boot. (Around Sterling Pounds 20,000 was bet on a series of games between Old Etonians and England in 1751!)

As London's population grew, so did the nobility's impatience with the crowds who gathered to watch them play. In pursuit of exclusivity, they approached Thomas Lord and asked him to set up a new private ground.

An ambitious entrepreneur, Lord leased a ground on Dorset Fields in Marylebone. He staged his first match - Middlesex versus Essex on 31st May 1787. Thus the Marylebone Cricket Club was formed.

A year later, it laid down a Code of Laws, requiring the wickets to be pitched 22 yards apart and detailing how players could be given out. Its Laws were adopted throughout the game - and MCC today remains the custodian and arbiter of Laws relating to cricket around the world. Strangely, at that time, the wicket was 'prepared' before a match by allowing sheep to come in and graze on the grass.

However, the Club subsequently acquired its first mowing machine and appointed its first grounds man in 1864.

In 1877 James Lillywhite and an England side boarded a steamer and travelled for two months before playing Australia in the first official Test match - although it was not until 26 years later, in 1903, that MCC undertook official responsibility for England's tours 'down under'.

At the turn of the century, the Board of Control for Test Matches, the Advisory County Cricket Committee and the Imperial Cricket Conference were all set up to cater for the growth in domestic, imperial and other international cricket.

And, thereafter, time has brought many changes. The International Cricket Council shifted its base from Lord's to flashy Dubai and the rules of the game are being constantly revised.

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