Cricket was probably devised by children and survived for many generations as essentially a children's game. Possibly it was derived from bowls, assuming that is the older sport, by the intervention of a batsman trying to stop the ball reaching its target by hitting it away. Until the 1760s when bowlers began to pitch the ball, it was always rolled or skimmed towards the wicket. 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 gate (e.g., a wicket gate), a stool or a tree stump as the wicket. The invention of the game could have happened in Norman or Plantagenet times anytime before 1300; or even in Saxon times before 1066.
On Thursday, 10 March 1300 (Julian Calendar), wardrobe accounts of King Edward I included refunds to one John de Leek of monies that he had paid out to enable Prince Edward to play "creag and other games" at both Westminster and Newenden. Prince Edward, the future Prince of Wales, was then aged 15. It has been suggested that "creag" was an early form of cricket. There is no evidence to support this view and creag could have been something quite different. It has been plausibly suggested that creag is an early spelling of the Gaelic word ''craic'' that has been rendered into modern English as ''crack'' (craic) and means simply "fun, enjoyment, abandonment, or lighthearted mischief; often in the context of drinking or music". This sense of the word ''crack'' is found in Irish English, Scottish English and Geordie (North East England). In Ireland the spelling ''craic'' is now more common than ''crack''.
Cricket essentially belongs to the same family of bat-and-ball games as stoolball, rounders and baseball but whether it evolved from any of these, or vice-versa, cannot be determined. There is a 1523 reference to stoolball at a designated field in Oxfordshire and this may have been a generic term for any game in which a ball is somehow hit with a bat or stick, but 18th century references to stoolball in conjunction with cricket clearly indicate that it was a separate activity.
A number of words used commonly in medieval England are thought to be possible sources for the name "cricket". In the earliest known reference to the sport in 1597, it is called ''creckett''. Given the strong medieval trade connections between south-east England and the County of Flanders when the latter belonged to the Duchy of Burgundy, the name may have been derived from the Middle Dutch (i.e., the language of Flanders at the time) ''krick''(''-e''), meaning a stick; or the Olde English ''cricc'' or ''cryce'' meaning a crutch or staff (see Birley, ch.1). In Samuel Johnson's ''Dictionary of the English Language'' (1755), he derived cricket from "''cryce'', Saxon, a stick". In Old French, the word ''criquet'' seems to have meant a kind of club or stick, though this may have been the origin of croquet. Another possible source is the Middle Dutch word ''krickstoel'', a long low stool used for kneeling in church, the shape of which resembled the two stump wicket used in early cricket (see Bowen, p.33). According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of Bonn University, "cricket" derives from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockey, ''met de krik ketsen'' (i.e., "with the stick chase").
The earliest definite reference to cricket being played anywhere is in evidence given at a 1597 court case which confirms that it was played on a certain plot of land in Guildford, Surrey, around 1550. The case concerned a dispute over the Royal Guildford Grammar School's ownership of the plot of land in question. The court in Guildford heard on Monday, 17 January 1597 (Julian date) from a coroner, John Derrick, who testified that he and his school friends had played ''creckett'' on the site fifty years earlier. John Derrick's deposition is preserved in the Constitution Book of Guildford. He bore written testimony as to a parcel of land in the parish of Holy Trinity in Guildford which, originally waste, had been appropriated and enclosed by one John Parvish to serve as a timber yard. This land, said Derrick, he had known for fifty years past and, when
"a scholler of the Ffree Schoole of Guildeford, hee and diverse of his fellowes did runne and play there at creckett and other plaies".John Derrick was then aged 59 and his testimony confirms that cricket was being played by children in Surrey c.1550 and it is perhaps significant that cricket is the only one of the "plaies" referred to by name (see Altham, p. 21).
In 1598, there was a reference to cricket in an Italian-English dictionary by Giovanni Florio. His definition of the word ''sgillare'' was: "to make a noise as a cricket (i.e., the insect), to play cricket-a-wicket, and be merry". Florio is the first writer known to have defined "cricket" in terms of both an insect and a game. In a later edition of his dictionary in 1611, Florio infers that "to play cricket-a-wicket" has sexual associations with references to ''frittfritt'' defined: "as we say cricket a wicket, or ''gigaioggie''"; and ''dibatticare'' defined: "to thrum a wench lustily till the bed cry ''giggaioggie''"!! Cricket-a-wicket seems therefore to have been a euphemism for sex in the same way that rock 'n' roll originally was.
Also in 1611, a French-English dictionary was published by Randle Cotgrave who defined the noun ''crosse'' as "the crooked staff wherewith boys play at cricket". The verb form of the word is ''crosser'', defined as "to play at cricket". Although cricket was defined as a boys' game in Cotgrave's dictionary, as per the Guildford schoolboys above, it was at about this time that adult participation began. Our limited knowledge of early cricket depends largely on court cases and these frequently relate to instances of "breaking the Sabbath" by playing on a Sunday. The first dates to 1611 when an ecclesiastical court prosecuted two parishioners of Sidlesham, in West Sussex, who failed to attend church on Easter Sunday because they were playing cricket. They were fined twelve pence each and made to do penance.
The earliest known "village cricket" match took place c.1610 at Chevening between two Kent teams called "Chalkhill" and "Weald and Upland". Village cricket became popular and was common in the south-eastern counties by the time of the English Civil War. In 1617, the 18-year old Oliver Cromwell was reportedly playing cricket and football in London.
The beginnings of cricket's social division between "gentlemen and players" can be traced to the reign of Charles I. In 1629, Henry Cuffin, a curate at Ruckinge in Kent, was prosecuted by an Archdeacon's Court for playing cricket on Sunday evening after prayers. He claimed that several of his fellow players were "persons of repute and fashion", this statement being the first evidence of cricket achieving popularity among the gentry. It was the gentry who introduced large-scale gambling into cricket and, eventually, some of them became patrons by forming select teams that would improve their chances of winning. The gentry were also responsible for the introduction of cricket to schools, initially as an extra-curricular activity, and it was played at Eton, Westminster and Winchester in the 17th century. During the Commonwealth, gambling was low key of political necessity as it met with severe Puritan disapproval, but village cricket continued to thrive. Unlike the theatres and other forms of entertainment, the Puritans tolerated it as long as players did not "break the Sabbath". The fact that Cromwell himself had played the game must have been a factor in its favour.
Following the death of Cromwell and the collapse of the Commonwealth, the Restoration was completed during the spring of 1660 and, in the general euphoria which both accompanied and followed it, gambling on cricket and other sports was freely pursued. The large amounts at stake led some investors to try and improve their chances of winning by forming teams that were stronger than the typical parish eleven. This was the beginning of the patronage that sustained and controlled cricket through the 18th century. It is likely that the first teams representing more than one parish were formed in the 1660s and the period saw the first "great matches" as the sport evolved from village cricket to major cricket, although this process may have taken several decades. In addition to forming strong teams, the patrons introduced professionalism by paying fees or retainers to the best of their working class players. One practice that developed was the offer by a patron of full-time employment to a professional player, often as a groom, butler, gamekeeper, gardener, etc. on condition that the player always represented his team. This was a very common arrangement in the 18th century with noted examples in Thomas Waymark and Lumpy Stevens.
The shortage of references in the latter part of the 17th century is due to the Licensing of the Press Act 1662 which imposed very stringent controls on the newspaper industry. Sport, including cricket, was not a subject to be reported and the few references found are in official records, such as court cases, or in private letters and diaries. For example, we know from a private letter that cricket was played on Richmond Green in the 1660s.
In 1695, Parliament decided against a renewal of the 1662 Licensing Act and so cleared the way for freedom of the press on the Act's expiry in 1696. Censorship had already been relaxed by the Bill of Rights in 1689. It was from this time that cricket matters could be reported in the newspapers, but it would be a very long time before the newspaper industry matured sufficiently to provide frequent, let alone comprehensive, reports. The earliest known newspaper report of a match was in the ''Foreign Post'' dated Wednesday, 7 July 1697:
"The middle of last week a great match at cricket was played in Sussex; there were eleven of a side, and they played for fifty guineas apiece".The stakes on offer confirm the importance of the fixture and the fact that it was eleven a side suggests that two strong and well-balanced teams were assembled. No other details were given but the report provides real evidence to support the view that top class cricket in the form of "great matches" played for high stakes was in vogue in the years following the Restoration. Given the Sussex venue, one of the organisers was probably Charles Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond, whose family was famous for its patronage of cricket through the 18th century when, with the rise of great clubs like Dartford, London, Slindon, Hambledon and Marylebone, cricket became the national sport of England.
The spread of cricket overseas had already begun in the 17th century with English colonisation of India, North America and the West Indies. The game is first recorded in America in 1709 and in India in 1721, but it certainly began much earlier. Indeed, given that the earliest reference to cricket in Yorkshire is as late as 1751, it is not unlikely that it was played in America before it had reached the north of England!
Sources include:
- H S Altham, A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914), George Allen & Unwin, 1962
- Derek Birley, A Social History of English Cricket, Aurum, 1999
- Rowland Bowen, Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970
- From Lads to Lord's, 2007
- David Underdown, Start of Play, Allen Lane, 2000
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