Theories abound regarding the origins of cricket, but little firm evidence about the sport's earliest days has been discovered, as of 2011. A popular game in many areas of the world, it is accepted that cricket got its start somewhere in Northern Europe before the Normans conquered England, at least in its basic form. Someone threw a small object and someone else attempted to hit it with a club. The earliest known cricket bat still in existence dates to 1729, according to ESPN Crickinfo.
Tudor Period
According to ESPNcrickinfo.com, the earliest documented evidence of a cricket game dates to 1550 in Guildford, Surrey, A reference to the game can also be found in a 1598 Italian-English dictionary.
18th Century
By the beginning of the 18th century, cricket had infiltrated the ranks of the English aristocracy. It was a game for men of means, though they would sometimes hire commoners as bowlers to toss the ball to them so they could simply enjoy batting. Then the commoners caught on to the game and became big fans, thronging cricket grounds and disrupting genteel play until one English gentleman finally established a private grounds in 1787, the Marylebone Cricket Club. In 1878, the MCC revised the rules of the game and published "The Laws of Cricket." The book was still in the possession of the MCC as of 2010.
19th Century
In 1844, cricket found its way across the Atlantic Ocean in a game played between the United States and Canada in New York. The wager, or prize money, was $1,000. Twenty years later, the rules regarding bowling expanded to allow over-arm pitching, which would prevail for the next 150 years. In the first documented collegiate game, Oxford played Cambridge to a draw in 1827.
Birth of Traditions
One of cricket's traditions involves a hat given to any bowler who takes three wickets with three consecutive balls. ESPNcrickinfo.com dates this to a game played in 1858. But perhaps the most notorious tradition involves an ongoing rivalry between Australia and England. Australia first managed to beat England in a cricket game -- in England -- in 1882. An unknown person published an obituary notice in the Sporting Times the next day, indicating that the body of English cricket was cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The next match between the teams was England's mission to reclaim "the Ashes." At some point, an urn containing the ashes of a variety of rumored substances came into existence. The MCC owns it and displays it in an English museum. By tradition, the Ashes must never leave England. However, the MCC commissioned a trophy in the 1990s duplicating the urn and the two countries continue to play for possession of it as of 2010.
Member Comments