Origins
A medieval “club ball” game with an underarm bowl to a batter, with fielders down the field to catch the ball. This is depicted in a detail from the Canticles of Holy Mary, made in the 13th century.
Cricket is one of a group of “club ball” games where players hit a ball with a hand-held piece of equipment. These are sports such as baseball (which shares much of its character with cricket, a member of the same bat-and-ball game family), golf, hockey, tennis, squash, badminton, and table tennis. What makes cricket unique is that there is a fixed target—the wicket (once supposedly a “wicket gate” to drive sheep)—which the batter has to protect. Cricket historian Harry Altham grouped “club ball” games into three: the “hockey group” (where the ball is struck between two goals), the “golf group” (where the ball is hit at an undefended target, like a hole), and the “cricket group” (where the ball is hit at a mark, the wicket, and then hit away from it).
Most believe that cricket developed as a child’s game in medieval south-east England. Others argue for an earlier origin, with the earliest definite mention being in 1597 in a court case in Guildford. This was a land dispute, and one of the witnesses was a 59-year-old coroner, John Derrick, who gave evidence that as a boy at Guildford free school he and his schoolfriends played “creckett” and other sports. Based on Derrick’s age, this would mean that cricket was being played around 1550 by youngsters in Surrey. The idea that it was invented as a child’s game is also supported by the fact that Randle Cotgrave’s 1611 English-French dictionary employed “crosse” to refer to “the crooked staff boys play at cricket,” and “crosser” to refer to “to play at cricket.”
One etymology derives the word “cricket” from the Old English “cryce” (or “cricc”) indicating a staff or crutch. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary linked it to the Saxon word “cryce.” The word “criquet” in Old French was a club or a stick. There were trade links between Flanders (at the time of Burgundy) and southeast England, so the name may have been derived from Middle Dutch “krick” (a stick or a crook). Or it might be from Middle Dutch “krickstoel,” a low church pew that resembles early cricket’s two-stump wicket. Word scholar Heiner Gillmeister interprets the name to have derived from the Middle Dutch phrase “met de (krik ket)sen” (“with the stick chase”). He even proposes the game itself has Flemish beginnings.
The Development of Amateur and Professional Cricket in England
Evolution of the cricket bat: The initial “hockey stick” shape (left) developed into the straight bat around 1760 when bowlers began to throw the ball.
While scoring runs has ever been the target, early cricket was diverse in significant ways. North American wicket preserved a lot of the features. Bowlers delivered the ball underarm on the ground to batsmen with hockey-stick-shaped bats. The wicket was low, consisting of two stumps, and runs were called “notches” as the scorers marked them by cutting tally sticks.
In 1611, the year that Cotgrave’s dictionary was published, church records in Sidlesham, Sussex, noted two parishioners, Bartholomew Wyatt and Richard Latter, absent from Easter Sunday church to play cricket. They were fined 12 pence and told to repent. This is the first known mention of adults playing cricket, and at this time the first official village match was staged in Chevening, Kent. One player, Jasper Vinall, was killed in 1624 after having been hit on the head during a match between two parish teams representing Sussex.
During much of the 1600s, cricket remained a local game. Puritans prohibited it, especially on Sundays, by church court records, which found it “profane” when it was played on the Sabbath, particularly where there was gambling or a large crowd.
Following the Restoration in 1660, sport experienced a revival, according to historian Derek Birley. Cricket was of particular interest to the court of King Charles II. Gamble was such a problem that Parliament enacted the 1664 Gambling Act, which limited stakes at £100—a huge figure then. Cricket was regarded as a gamble along with horse racing and blood sports. Rich sponsors organized high-stakes games, who hired the initial professional cricketers. Cricket had reached England and even abroad by the late 1600s—the first mention of the sport abroad in 1676. A 1697 newspaper article mentions a “great cricket match” played in Sussex with 50-guinea stakes, now considered the earliest known first-class game.
The upper-class players called themselves “amateurs” to distinguish themselves from lower-class professionals, even possessing their own changing rooms. The gentry, as well as nobles like the Dukes of Richmond, were governed by a code of conduct (noblesse oblige), asserting superiority in sports so they could resolve their wagers. Soon enough, the model amateur cricketer was an Oxbridge-educated public school man—a “gentleman” born to be master. Even though amateurs legally only incurred expenses, they all took the under-the-table payments, and they were referred to as “shamateurs.”
18th & 19th Century English Cricket
Francis Cotes, The Young Cricketer, 1768
The 18th century was an era when cricket was being made England’s national sport by patronage and betting. Cricket was very popular in London by 1707, where it drew massive crowds to watch at Finsbury’s Artillery Ground. Single-wicket cricket had enormous bets on it, with the record high in 1748. Bowlers started throwing the ball instead of rolling it around 1760, and so the straight bat replaced the old hockey-stick form.
The Hambledon Club, which had existed in the 1760s, was the center of cricket until the establishment of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in 1787 and the subsequent building of Lord’s. MCC took over as the administering body of the sport, and it instituted rules including the three-stump wicket and leg-before-wicket (lbw). Underarm bowling was replaced by roundarm, and then overarm—both rule introductions which were controversial—during the 1800s. County clubs started with Sussex in 1839, and in 1889, eight premier counties staged the official County Championship.
The oldest known cricket picture, Roger Fenton, 25 July 1857
W.G. Grace was the most famous player of the 19th century whose career (beginning in 1865) witnessed the amateur-professional divide diminish. Grace earned more than some professionals. The pre-WWI era is nostalgically known as cricket’s “Golden Age,” controlled by superstar cricketers and contests as county and Test cricket grew.
Cricket Goes Global
English team tours North America, 1859
In 1844, the first international match (at the club level) was organized by the United States and Canada in Toronto, and it was taken by Canada. Englishmen toured North America in 1859. The British Empire spread cricket to Australia, the Caribbean, India, New Zealand, and South Africa.
England toured Australia in 1862. The first international Australian team was an Aboriginal team that toured England in 1868. The first Test match played officially was between England and Australia in 1876–77 at the MCG. The Ashes rivalry began in 1882, and Test cricket increased in 1888–89 when England toured South Africa.
20th Century Cricket
Australia’s Don Bradman, 99.94 in Test averages, dominated the inter-war years. England used “bodyline” tactics in 1932–33—bowling at batsmen’s bodies with a packed leg-side field. This caused diplomatic tensions between the nations.
New Test nations joined: the West Indies (1928), New Zealand (1930), and India (1932). Following WWII, Pakistan was awarded Test status in 1952 after Partition. Test cricket accelerated, reaching over 1,000 matches by the 2000s.
The English counties introduced limited-overs cricket in 1963, assuring results and increasing revenue. In 1971 came the first ODI, and in 1975 the ICC brought in the Cricket World Cup. Sri Lanka gained Test status in 1982, and apartheid excluded South Africa until 1992—the year that also welcomed Zimbabwe.
21st Century Cricket
The 2000s included the introduction of Bangladesh’s first Test (2000) and the rise to fame of T20 cricket. The Indian Premier League (IPL), commenced in 2008, was a cash-spinner that took T20 and franchise leagues to unprecedented heights. The ICC promotes T20 as the growth driver of cricket, hosting a biennial T20 World Cup and hosting it in competitions like the Asian Games. Cricket’s base has now surpassed over a billion, 90% drawn from South Asia. Shorter versions like T10 and The Hundred emerged, but they were controversial.
International events also influenced cricket. The 2008 Mumbai attacks halted India-Pakistan bilateral series, while the Sri Lankan team attack in Pakistan in 2009 kept Pakistan from hosting until 2019.
Ireland and Afghanistan became the 12th and 11th Test nations in 2017.