History of cricket
The well-known history of cricket goes back to the 16th century . The first country comparison took place in 1844, although the official history of international matches ( test cricket ) did not begin until 1877. From its inception in England to the present day, cricket has spread as a professional sport in many Commonwealth countries.
The beginnings
Emergence
The exact origins are indeed in the dark, but after all, what is known today, cricket is very likely in Saxon or Norman times by children in South East England, in the Weald known forest landscape in the counties of Kent and Sussex have been invented. It is believed that it survived as a children's game for many centuries until it was increasingly adopted by adults in the early 17th century.
Origin of the name "Cricket"
A number of words that mean bat (bat) or wicket can be used as the source word. In Old French, the word criquet stood for a kind of club, from which croquet (French and English croquet ) may have developed. Some believe that cricket and croquet have common roots. In Flemish, krick means stick, and in Old English cricc or cryce stands for crutch (the hard K sound, however, does not indicate south-east England, rather the north).
Another possibility is the French criquet or Flemish krickstoel , the low knee chair used in the church, which looks similar to the low, two- stump early form of the wicket .
First documented mention
Apart from earlier, not really provable references to cricket, the first recordable mention is in a court judgment from the year 1597, in which it was about the property of a school. The 59-year-old John Derrick stated that he and his school friends had played crazy on the said piece of land fifty years earlier . The school was the Royal Grammar School at Guildford. It can therefore be assumed with some certainty that cricket was played in Surrey by 1550 at the latest .
It was first mentioned as an adult sport in 1611, when two men were convicted of playing cricket on a Sunday instead of going to church. A dictionary from the same year refers to cricket as a boy’s game, suggesting that adults had not played it for that long at the time.
Early 17th century
A number of mentions from before the English Civil War suggest that cricket was played as an adult sport between village teams. However, there is no evidence that county teams already existed. The same applies to cricket's passion for betting, which escalated later in the 18th century. It is therefore assumed that village cricket had developed as early as the middle of the 17th century, that the later county cricket , as well as the financial importance of the sport, could not yet be discussed.
The time of the republic
After the end of the English Civil War (1648), the new Puritan government took action against illegal gatherings , especially against such harsh sports as football. The new laws required, among other things, a stricter observance of the holiday. Since this was the only possible time for recreational activity for the lower classes, the popularity of cricket may have suffered during this time. However, this did not apply to private schools such as Winchester or St Paul's. However , there is no evidence that cricket was banned under the Oliver Cromwell government .
Passion for betting and the press
After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, cricket undoubtedly experienced a great boom and probably for the first time also attracted gamblers who bet large sums of money. In 1664 a law was passed that limited the stake to the then very high amount of £ 100. By the end of the century, cricket was certainly an important sport for the betting business. In 1697, the now freer press reported for the first time about a game in Sussex where 50 guineas were played per team. However, this reporting may still be viewed as an individual case.
Cricket in the 18th century
Patronage and players
Through the betting business, patrons became aware of the sport for the first time , as setting up your own teams increased the odds, which probably also gave rise to the first “county teams”. The first known game in which teams competed under the name of their county took place in 1709, but such encounters certainly happened much earlier.
The most important of these early patrons belonged to a group of nobles and business people who became active from around 1725. They included Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond , Sir William Gage, Alan Brodrick and Edward Stead. Since that time, not least because of the participation of well-known personalities, regular reports on cricket have been made in the press. For the first time you also hear from individual players such as Thomas Waymark.
Cricket is exported
Cricket was introduced to North America by the English colonies in the 17th century. Probably even before it reached the north of England. In the first half of the 18th century, cricket was introduced in the West Indies (Caribbean) by colonists and in India by seafarers from the East India Company . It practically reached Australia with the first colonists around 1788, New Zealand and South Africa followed in the early 19th century.
Development of the rules
The basics of cricket, such as the bat, ball, wicket , pitch, overs , etc., have existed since the earliest times. From the year 1727 one hears for the first time about so-called "Articles of Agreement", which laid down the rules for a certain game, due to the fact that such large sums were bet. This became common in the period that followed.
The first universal rules, Laws of Cricket , were written down in 1744 and amended for the first time in 1774 when innovations such as the LBW rule, the third stump and the maximum width of the racket were added. The rules stipulated, among other things, that from the gentlemen present, two people were to be selected to act as umpires in all disputes. These rules were drawn up by the so-called "Star and Garter Club", whose members were supposed to found the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1787 , which to this day is solely responsible for the cricket rules.
The further development in England
Cricket gradually spread throughout England, with a game first reported in Yorkshire in 1751 . The original throwing or rather bowling technique, in which the ball rolled along the ground, changed after 1760 when bowlers began to lob the ball and experiment with direction, length and speed. Scorecards have been kept regularly since 1772, so that the development of the sport has been easier to follow since then.
The first famous clubs were the London Cricket Club and the Dartford Cricket Club in Kent at the beginning of the 18th century. London played its games on the Artillery Ground, which still exists today. Other clubs soon followed, such as the teams from Slindon , Sussex , backed by the Duke of Richmond and including famous player Richard Newland. Other well known clubs came from Maidenhead, Hornchurch, Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Bromley, Addington, Harlow and Chertsey.
But by far the most famous of the early cricket clubs was Hambledon . The club began as a purely village team and gained a certain fame from 1756. The actual club was founded in the 1760s and, thanks to the strong support of patrons, remained something of the center of the cricket world for thirty years until the MCC was founded in 1787. Many excellent cricketers have played for Hambledon, such as star batsman John Small and the first great almost bowler Thomas Brett. Her most famous adversary was the Chertsey and Surrey bowler Edward "Lumpy" Stevens, who is believed to have been the protagonist in the introduction of flighted delivery , which led to the development of today's straight racket, since the old one A curved stick reminiscent of a hockey stick was only effective against balls rolled on the floor.
Cricket in the 19th century
The first crisis
The first crisis in cricket came at the beginning of the 19th century when, during the Napoleonic Wars, national cricket practically came to a standstill due to the lack of good players and the dwindling flow of money. The first homemade crisis, however, developed out of the dispute over the legalization of the so-called round arm litters.
Organizationally, too, the sport underwent major changes when the first county clubs were formed. All of today's county clubs, beginning with the Sussex CCC , were formed during the 19th century.
No sooner had the counties established themselves than tour teams were founded as a kind of countermovement, above all the All-England Eleven of William Clarke in 1846. This movement lasted about thirty years, but ultimately the counties and the MCC prevailed.
International cricket
The very first country comparison between the USA and Canada took place in 1844 at Elysian Field in Hoboken, New Jersey . In 1859 a team of English professional players started their first overseas tour to North America.
In 1864 the bowling revolution followed with the legalization of overarm throws. William Gilbert Grace , the "Great Cricketer" made his debut that year and also 1864 was the first year of publication of the famous Wisden Cricketers' Almanack , which is still considered the Bible of Cricket to this day.
In 1877 an English tour team played two games against full Australian teams. These are now considered the first two test matches . The following year the Australians visited England for the first time, which turned out to be a great success without, however, playing a test match. More such tours followed, and finally in 1882 in what was certainly the most famous test match of all time in the London Oval, the Ashes were founded. South Africa became the third test nation in 1889 .
The County Championship
The next great upheaval came in 1890 when the County Championship was launched. This period up to the outbreak of the First World War is called "The Golden Age of Cricket", during which "the spirit of the game" was supposedly particularly upheld. Famous players from this period include WG Grace, Wilfred Rhodes, CB Fry, KS Ranjitsinhji and Victor Trumper.
Balls per over
The previously usual four balls per over were replaced by 5-ball over in 1889 and later (1900) to the 6 balls common today. Some countries later experimented with 8 balls and introduced them first in Australia in 1922, then in New Zealand in 1924 and in South Africa in 1937. This was also introduced on a test basis in England in 1939, but with the outbreak of the Second World War the experiment was over and after the war the old 6-ball over was continued. The 1947 version of the Laws of Cricket allowed for both 6 and 8 balls. However, since the 1979/80 Australian and New Zealand seasons, only 6 balls have been used worldwide and the current version of the rules from 2000 only allows 6 balls again.
Cricket in the 20th century
Test cricket
India, the West Indies and New Zealand became Test Nations in the 1930s, with Pakistan following after World War II. Later Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Ireland and Afghanistan were granted test status on June 22, 2017. It was only after the Second World War that the clear dominance of England and Australia was broken, first by the team from the West Indies and later also by the Asian teams.
The Bodyline series (1932–1933)
Bodyline was the Australian name for a throwing tactic developed by the English national team under their captain Douglas Jardine for the Ashes series 1932-1933. At that time it was called leg theory by the English .
This tactic was not really new, as it had been used before at least in the English County Championship. But the two extremely fast English fast bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce gave it a new quality.
The reason for the tactic, in which the ball is aimed at the body and many field players are placed in the back of the batsman (the leg-side), was the dominance of the Australian star batsman Donald Bradman . The calculation worked out for the English team from a purely sporting point of view, the Ashes were won back by four wins over one.
But at least in the third Test match in Adelaide public outrage reached it in Australia climax was reached when the Australian captain Bill Woodfull by a fast ball over the heart, ironically, however, by a cast that anything with the Bodyline tactics to do would have. The famous saying comes from the Australian captain: Two teams are out there. One tries to play cricket and the other doesn't.
The accusation of unsportsmanlike conduct in turn sparked a storm of indignation in Great Britain (mainly England, of course). There was even a diplomatic crisis between the two countries, which could only be ended with the intervention of the Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons .
Apartheid and Cricket (from 1968)
The apartheid system began to indirectly affect international cricket from 1961, when South Africa , after leaving the Commonwealth of Nations , according to the statutes of the time, also had to leave the Imperial Cricket Conference . The scandal came in 1968 when the English team was unloaded for the test series planned for the winter in South Africa after the colored player Basil D'Oliveira from South Africa had been set up for the English team. In 1970, South Africa was finally suspended from international cricket.
From the point of view of South African cricket, this was almost tragic, since after a clear Test Series victory over Australia South Africa was considered the world's best team for the first time. In terms of sport, South Africa's (white) cricket stayed afloat for the next few decades through so-called rebel tours , in which a number of international stars took part, who were not deterred by the threat of multi-year bans.
In 1991, the suspension was lifted after the end of apartheid.
Limited overs cricket (one-day cricket)
The greatest revolution in gaming technology after World War II certainly brought the introduction of one-day cricket in England in the 1960s. The second competition , introduced in England in 1969, resulted in a significant reduction in county championship games.
Although initially rejected by many “traditional” cricket fans, this shorter form of cricket has increased its attractiveness for young people again and has proven extremely successful commercially.
The first one-day international match (One-Day International) took place in 1971 on the Melbourne Cricket Ground between Australia and England as a replacement for the test match that was canceled due to heavy rain. This stopgap solution soon proved so popular that the first Cricket World Cup was held in England as early as 1975 .
The Packer Revolution (World Series Cricket) (1977)
World Series Cricket (WSC) was the international cricket competition organized by the Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer from 1977 to 1979, which was designed as a counter-event to official cricket under the direction of the International Cricket Conference .
The background to this was on the one hand the comparatively low income of the cricketers at the time, and on the other hand Kerry Packer's wish to secure the television rights for his channel Nine for international games in Australia, which he was denied. Therefore, he signed many well-known players, especially from Australia, England and the West Indies.
Since both sides suffered financial losses as a result of this schism , it was finally agreed to discontinue WSC and to grant Channel Nine the broadcasting rights.
Many of the innovations in television broadcasting introduced by Packer have become indispensable today. Floodlit games, which were completely unknown until then, have become more and more popular in one-day cricket, which has already experienced a great international boost as a result. Colorful playing clothes, instead of the traditional white, are now standard for one-day cricket and, last but not least, the financial situation of top players has improved significantly since then.
The 21st century
Leaderboards
In June 2001 the ICC introduced an official “ Test Championship ” world ranking and in October 2002 a corresponding ranking for One-Day Internationals. In the first decade, both rankings were dominated by Australia, before it subsequently switched frequently between several teams.
Worldwide distribution
Cricket continues to be one of the most important sports in the world and the most popular spectator sport on the Indian subcontinent. The neglected treatment of the rest of the world by the ICC has changed and the ICC has expanded its "Development Program" with the aim of making it more popular, especially in Asia, Africa and the USA. Even first-class cricket was introduced for some countries in the form of the ICC Intercontinental Cup .
Twenty20 cricket
The latest form of cricket is Twenty20 Cricket, an even shorter version of 20 overs per team, for the evening hours, which became very popular immediately after its introduction in England in 2003, and later worldwide. The Indian Premier League , established by the Indian Association in 2008 , also quickly became a major commercial success. There have been six world championships in this form of play since 2007 (as of 2018).