Cricket History
Origin
No one knows when or where cricket began but there is a body of
evidence, much of it circumstantial, that strongly suggests the game was
devised during
Saxon or
Norman times by children living in the
Weald,
an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England that
lies across Kent and Sussex. In medieval times, the Weald was populated
by small farming and metal-working communities. It is generally believed
that cricket survived as a children's game for many centuries before it
was increasingly taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th
century.
[1]
It is quite likely that cricket was devised by children and survived
for many generations as essentially a children’s game. Adult
participation is unknown before the early 17th century. Possibly cricket
was derived from
bowls,
assuming bowls is the older sport, by the intervention of a batsman
trying to stop the ball from reaching its target by hitting it away.
Playing on sheep-grazed land or in clearings, the original implements
may have been a matted lump of sheep’s wool (or even a stone or a small
lump of wood) as the ball; a stick or a crook or another farm tool as
the bat; and a stool or a tree stump or a gate (e.g., a wicket gate) as
the wicket.
[2]
Derivation of the name of "cricket"
A number of words are thought to be possible sources for the term
"cricket". In the earliest known reference to the sport in 1598 (
see below), it is called
creckett. The name may have been derived from the
Middle Dutch krick(
-e), meaning a stick; or the
Old English cricc or
cryce meaning a crutch or staff.
[2] Another possible source is the Middle Dutch word
krickstoel, meaning a long low stool used for kneeling in church and which resembled the long low
wicket with two
stumps used in early cricket.
According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of Bonn University, "cricket" derives from the Middle Dutch
met de (krik ket)sen
(i.e., "with the stick chase"), which also suggests a Dutch connection
in the game's origin. It is more likely that the terminology of cricket
was based on words in use in south east England at the time and, given
trade connections with the
County of Flanders, especially in the 15th century when it belonged to the
Duchy of Burgundy, many Middle Dutch
[3] words found their way into southern English dialects.
[4]
First definite reference
John Derrick was a pupil at The Royal Grammar School in Guildford when he and his friends played
creckett circa 1550
Despite many prior suggested references, the first definite mention
of the game is found in a 1598 court case concerning an ownership
dispute over a plot of common land in
Guildford, Surrey. A 59-year old coroner,
John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played
creckett on the site fifty years earlier when they attended the
Free School. Derrick's account proves beyond reasonable doubt that the game was being played in
Surrey circa 1550.
[5][6]
The first 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.
[7]
In the same year, a dictionary defined cricket as a boys' game and this
suggests that adult participation was a recent development.
[5]
Early 17th century
A number of references occur up to the
English Civil War
and these indicate that cricket had become an adult game contested by
parish teams, but there is no evidence of county strength teams at this
time. Equally, there is little evidence of the rampant gambling that
characterised the game throughout the 18th century. 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.
[1]
The Commonwealth
After the Civil War ended in 1648, the new Puritan government clamped
down on "unlawful assemblies", in particular the more raucous sports
such as football. Their laws also demanded a stricter observance of the
Sabbath than there had been previously. As the Sabbath was the only free
time available to the lower classes, cricket's popularity may have
waned during the
Commonwealth. Having said that, it did flourish in public fee-paying schools such as
Winchester and
St Paul's. There is no actual evidence that
Oliver Cromwell's regime banned cricket specifically and there are references to it during the
interregnum that suggest it was acceptable to the authorities provided that it did not cause any "breach of the Sabbath".
[1] It is believed that the nobility in general adopted cricket at this time through involvement in village games.
[5]
Gambling and press coverage
Cricket certainly thrived after the
Restoration
in 1660 and is believed to have first attracted gamblers making large
bets at this time. In 1664, the "Cavalier" Parliament passed the Gaming
Act 1664 which limited stakes to £100, although that was still a fortune
at the time,
[1] equivalent to about £12 thousand in present day terms
[8].
Cricket had certainly become a significant gambling sport by the end of
the 17th century. There is a newspaper report of a "great match" played
in Sussex in 1697 which was 11-a-side and played for high stakes of 50
guineas a side.
[7]
With
freedom of the press
having been granted in 1696, cricket for the first time could be
reported in the newspapers. But it was a long time before the newspaper
industry adapted sufficiently to provide frequent, let alone
comprehensive, coverage of the game. During the first half of the 18th
century, press reports tended to focus on the betting rather than on the
play.
[1]
18th-century cricket
Patronage and players
Gambling introduced the first patrons because some of the gamblers
decided to strengthen their bets by forming their own teams and it is
believed the first "county teams" were formed in the aftermath of the
Restoration in 1660, especially as members of the nobility were
employing "local experts" from village cricket as the earliest
professionals.
[5]
The first known game in which the teams use county names is in 1709 but
there can be little doubt that these sort of fixtures were being
arranged long before that. The match in 1697 was probably Sussex versus
another county.
The most notable of the early patrons were a group of aristocrats and
businessmen who were active from about 1725, which is the time that
press coverage became more regular, perhaps as a result of the patrons'
influence. These men included
the 2nd Duke of Richmond,
Sir William Gage,
Alan Brodrick and
Edward Stead. For the first time, the press mentions individual players like
Thomas Waymark.
Cricket moves out of England
Cricket was introduced to North America via the English colonies in the 17th century,
[4]
probably before it had even reached the north of England. In the 18th
century it arrived in other parts of the globe. It was introduced to the
West Indies by colonists
[4] and to India by
British East India Company
mariners in the first half of the century. It arrived in Australia
almost as soon as colonisation began in 1788. New Zealand and South
Africa followed in the early years of the 19th century.
[5]
Cricket never caught on in Canada, despite efforts by an
imperial-minded elite to promote the game as a way of identifying with
the British Empire. Canada, unlike Australia and the West Indies,
witnessed a continual decline in the popularity of the game during
1860–1960. Linked to upper class British-Canadian elites, the game never
became popular with the general public. In the summer season it had to
compete with baseball. During the First World War, Canadian units
stationed in Britain played baseball, not cricket.
[9][10]
Development of the Laws
The basic rules of cricket such as bat and ball, the wicket, pitch
dimensions, overs, how out, etc. have existed since time immemorial. In
1728, the Duke of Richmond and Alan Brodick drew up
Articles of Agreement
to determine the code of practice in a particular game and this became a
common feature, especially around payment of stake money and
distributing the winnings given the importance of gambling.
[7]
In 1744, the
Laws of Cricket
were codified for the first time and then amended in 1774, when
innovations such as lbw, middle stump and maximum bat width were added.
These laws stated that
the principals shall choose from amongst the gentlemen present two umpires who shall absolutely decide all disputes. The codes were drawn up by the so-called "Star and Garter Club" whose members ultimately founded
MCC at
Lord's in 1787. MCC immediately became the custodian of the Laws and has made periodic revisions and recodifications subsequently.
[11]
Continued growth in England
The game continued to spread throughout England and, in 1751,
Yorkshire is first mentioned as a venue.
[12] The original form of
bowling
(i.e., rolling the ball along the ground as in bowls) was superseded
sometime after 1760 when bowlers began to pitch the ball and study
variations in line, length and pace.
[1]
Scorecards began to be kept on a regular basis from 1772 and since then
an increasingly clear picture has emerged of the sport's development.
[13]
An artwork depicting the history of the cricket bat
The first famous clubs were
London and
Dartford in the early 18th century. London played its matches on the
Artillery Ground, which still exists. Others followed, particularly
Slindon in Sussex which was backed by the Duke of Richmond and featured the star player
Richard Newland. There were other prominent clubs at Maidenhead, Hornchurch, Maidstone, Sevenoaks,
Bromley,
Addington,
Hadlow and
Chertsey.
But far and away the most famous of the early clubs was
Hambledon
in Hampshire. It started as a parish organisation that first achieved
prominence in 1756. The club itself was founded in the 1760s and was
well patronised to the extent that it was the focal point of the game
for about thirty years until the formation of
MCC and the opening of
Lord's Cricket Ground in 1787. Hambledon produced several outstanding players including the master batsman
John Small and the first great fast bowler
Thomas Brett. Their most notable opponent was the Chertsey and Surrey bowler
Edward "Lumpy" Stevens, who is believed to have been the main proponent of the flighted delivery.
It was in answer to the flighted, or pitched, delivery that the
straight bat was introduced. The old "hockey stick" style of bat was
only really effective against the ball being trundled or skimmed along
the ground.
Cricket and crisis
Cricket faced its first real crisis during the 18th century when major matches virtually ceased during the
Seven Years War.
This was largely due to shortage of players and lack of investment. But
the game survived and the "Hambledon Era" proper began in the
mid-1760s.
Cricket faced another major crisis at the beginning of the 19th
century when a cessation of major matches occurred during the
culminating period of the
Napoleonic Wars.
Again, the causes were shortage of players and lack of investment. But,
as in the 1760s, the game survived and a slow recovery began in 1815.
On 17 June 1815, on the eve of the
Battle of Waterloo British soldiers played a cricket match in the
Bois de la Cambre park in Brussels. Ever since the park area where that match took place has been called
La Pelouse des Anglais (the Englishmen's lawn).
MCC was itself the centre of controversy in the Regency period, largely on account of the enmity between
Lord Frederick Beauclerk and
George Osbaldeston. In 1817, their intrigues and jealousies exploded into a match-fixing scandal with the top player
William Lambert being banned from playing at
Lord's Cricket Ground for life. Gambling scandals in cricket have been going on since the 17th century.
In the 1820s, cricket faced a major crisis of its own making as the campaign to allow
roundarm bowling gathered pace.
19th-century cricket
View of
Geneva's Plaine de Plainpalais with cricketers, 1817
The game also underwent a fundamental change of organisation with the
formation for the first time of county clubs. All the modern county
clubs, starting with
Sussex in 1839, were founded during the 19th century.
A cricket match at Darnall, Sheffield in the 1820s.
No sooner had the first county clubs established themselves than they faced what amounted to "player action" as
William Clarke created the travelling
All-England Eleven
in 1846. Though a commercial venture, this team did much to popularise
the game in districts which had never previously been visited by
high-class cricketers. Other similar teams were created and this vogue
lasted for about thirty years. But the counties and MCC prevailed.
The growth of cricket in the mid and late 19th century was assisted
by the development of the railway network. For the first time, teams
from a long distance apart could play one other without a prohibitively
time-consuming journey. Spectators could travel longer distances to
matches, increasing the size of crowds.
In 1864, another bowling revolution resulted in the legalisation of
overarm and in the same year
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack was first published.
The "Great Cricketer",
W G Grace, made his
first-class
debut in 1865. His feats did much to increase the game's popularity and
he introduced technical innovations which revolutionised the game,
particularly in batting.
International cricket begins
The
first ever international cricket game was between the
USA and
Canada in 1844. The match was played at the grounds of the
St George's Cricket Club in New York.
[14]
The English team 1859 on their way to the USA
In 1859, a team of leading English professionals set off to North
America on the first-ever overseas tour and, in 1862, the first English
team toured Australia.
Between May and October 1868, a team of
Australian Aborigines toured England in what was the
first Australian cricket team to travel overseas.
The first Australian touring team (1878) pictured at Niagara Falls
In 1877, an
England touring team in
Australia played two matches against full Australian XIs that are now regarded as the inaugural
Test matches.
The following year, the Australians toured England for the first time
and were a spectacular success. No Tests were played on that tour but
more soon followed and, at
The Oval in 1882, arguably the most famous match of all time gave rise to
The Ashes.
South Africa became the third Test nation in 1889.
National championships
A major watershed occurred in 1890 when the official
County Championship was constituted in England. This organisational initiative has been repeated in other countries. Australia established the
Sheffield Shield
in 1892–93. Other national competitions to be established were the
Currie Cup in South Africa, the Plunkett Shield in New Zealand and the
Ranji Trophy in India.
The period from 1890 to the outbreak of the First World War has
become an object of nostalgia, ostensibly because the teams played
cricket according to "the spirit of the game", but more realistically
because it was a peacetime period that was shattered by the First World
War. The era has been called The
Golden Age of cricket and it featured numerous great names such as Grace,
Wilfred Rhodes,
C B Fry,
K S Ranjitsinhji and
Victor Trumper.
Balls per over
In 1889 the immemorial four ball over was replaced by a five ball
over and then this was changed to the current six balls an over in 1900.
Subsequently, some countries experimented with eight balls an over. In
1922, the number of balls per over was changed from six to eight in
Australia only. In 1924 the eight ball over was extended to New Zealand
and in 1937 to South Africa. In England, the eight ball over was adopted
experimentally for the 1939 season; the intention was to continue the
experiment in 1940, but first-class cricket was suspended for the Second
World War and when it resumed, English cricket reverted to the six ball
over. The 1947 Laws of Cricket allowed six or eight balls depending on
the conditions of play. Since the 1979/80 Australian and New Zealand
seasons, the six ball over has been used worldwide and the most recent
version of the Laws in 2000 only permits six ball overs.
20th-century cricket
Growth of Test cricket
When the
Imperial Cricket Conference (as it was originally called) was founded in 1909, only England, Australia and South Africa were members.
India,
West Indies and
New Zealand became Test nations before the Second World War and
Pakistan
soon afterwards. The international game grew with several "affiliate
nations" getting involved and, in the closing years of the 20th century,
three of those became Test nations also:
Sri Lanka,
Zimbabwe and
Bangladesh.
Test cricket remained the sport's highest level of standard
throughout the 20th century but it had its problems, notably in the
infamous "
Bodyline Series" of 1932–33 when
Douglas Jardine's England used so-called "leg theory" to try and neutralise the run-scoring brilliance of Australia's
Don Bradman.
Suspension of South Africa (1970–91)
The greatest crisis to hit international cricket was brought about by
apartheid, the South African policy of racial segregation. The situation began to crystallise after 1961 when South Africa left the
Commonwealth of Nations and so, under the rules of the day, its cricket board had to leave the
International Cricket Conference
(ICC). Cricket's opposition to apartheid intensified in 1968 with the
cancellation of England's tour to South Africa by the South African
authorities, due to the inclusion of "coloured" cricketer
Basil D'Oliveira
in the England team. In 1970, the ICC members voted to suspend South
Africa indefinitely from international cricket competition. Ironically,
the South African team at that time was probably the strongest in the
world.
Starved of top-level competition for its best players, the South
African Cricket Board began funding so-called "rebel tours", offering
large sums of money for international players to form teams and tour
South Africa. The ICC's response was to blacklist any rebel players who
agreed to tour South Africa, banning them from officially sanctioned
international cricket. As players were poorly remunerated during the
1970s, several accepted the offer to tour South Africa, particularly
players getting towards the end of their careers for which a
blacklisting would have little effect.
The rebel tours continued into the 1980s but then progress was made
in South African politics and it became clear that apartheid was ending.
South Africa, now a "Rainbow Nation" under
Nelson Mandela, was welcomed back into international sport in 1991.
World Series Cricket
The money problems of top cricketers were also the root cause of
another cricketing crisis that arose in 1977 when the Australian media
magnate
Kerry Packer
fell out with the Australian Cricket Board over TV rights. Taking
advantage of the low remuneration paid to players, Packer retaliated by
signing several of the best players in the world to a privately run
cricket league outside the structure of international cricket. World
Series Cricket hired some of the banned South African players and
allowed them to show off their skills in an international arena against
other world-class players. The schism lasted only until 1979 and the
"rebel" players were allowed back into established international
cricket, though many found that their national teams had moved on
without them. Long-term results of World Series Cricket have included
the introduction of significantly higher player salaries and innovations
such as coloured kit and night games.
Limited-overs cricket
In the 1960s, English county teams began playing a version of cricket
with games of only one innings each and a maximum number of overs per
innings. Starting in 1963 as a knockout competition only, limited overs
grew in popularity and in 1969 a national league was created which
consequently caused a reduction in the number of matches in the County
Championship.
Although many "traditional" cricket fans objected to the shorter form
of the game, limited overs cricket did have the advantage of delivering
a result to spectators within a single day; it did improve cricket's
appeal to younger or busier people; and it did prove commercially
successful.
The first limited overs international match took place at
Melbourne Cricket Ground
in 1971 as a time-filler after a Test match had been abandoned because
of heavy rain on the opening days. It was tried simply as an experiment
and to give the players some exercise, but turned out to be immensely
popular.
Limited overs internationals
(LOIs or ODIs, after one-day Internationals) have since grown to become
a massively popular form of the game, especially for busy people who
want to be able to see a whole match. The International Cricket Council
reacted to this development by organising the first
Cricket World Cup in England in 1975, with all the Test playing nations taking part.
Increasing use of technology
Limited overs cricket increased television ratings for cricket
coverage. Innovative techniques that were originally introduced for
coverage of LOI matches were soon adopted for Test coverage. The
innovations included presentation of in-depth statistics and graphical
analysis, placing miniature cameras in the stumps, multiple usage of
cameras to provide shots from several locations around the ground, high
speed photography and computer graphics technology enabling television
viewers to study the course of a delivery and help them understand an
umpire's decision.
In 1992, the use of a
third umpire
to adjudicate runout appeals with television replays was introduced in
the Test series between South Africa and India. The third umpire's
duties have subsequently expanded to include decisions on other aspects
of play such as stumpings, catches and boundaries. As yet, the third
umpire is not called upon to adjudicate lbw appeals, although there is a
virtual reality tracking technology (i.e.,
Hawk-Eye) that is approaching perfection in predicting the course of a delivery.
21st-century cricket
Cricket remains a major world sport in terms of participants, spectators and media interest.
The ICC has expanded its development programme with the goal of
producing more national teams capable of competing at Test level.
Development efforts are focused on African and Asian nations; and on the
United States. In 2004, the
ICC Intercontinental Cup brought first-class cricket to 12 nations, mostly for the first time.
In June 2001, the ICC introduced a "Test Championship Table" and, in
October 2002, a "One-day International Championship Table". Australia
has consistently topped both these tables in the 2000s.
Cricket's newest innovation is
Twenty20,
essentially an evening entertainment. It has so far enjoyed enormous
popularity and has attracted large attendances at matches as well as
good TV audience ratings. The
inaugural ICC Twenty20 World Cup tournament was held in 2007 with a follow-up event in 2009. The formation of Twenty20 leagues in India – the unofficial
Indian Cricket League, which started in 2007, and the official
Indian Premier League, starting in 2008 – raised much speculation in the cricketing press about their effect on the future of cricket
