A Short History of Cricket

The history of cricket has been researched in great detail, although no-one is really certain of its origins. However, its an exciting thought that we are now part of a sport that is probably over one thousand years old in its earliest forms, and over 400 years old as a game that is recognisable as the one we play today.

This page is a quick guide to the history of cricket and how it fits into the modern game, so that you can get a feel for the great tradition that you are following. If you’re curious for more detail, then try Cricinfo or Wikipedia. With thanks to their authors, most of the following summarises parts of these excellent resources.

The origins of the game are most likely to be in Northern Europe, before the 11th Century. This was a simple game, with one player propelling an object – a piece of wood or some other form of ball - and another player striking it with a suitable club. Historians have placed this game in the Celtic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Dutch and Norman-French lands, but clear evidence is lacking.

However, even non-historians will recognise the link between this ancient pastime and the gladiatorial contests of the 21st Century, with Brett Lee propelling a ball at over 150kph to Sachin Tendulkar.

Court documents from 1597 provide the first clear record of the history of cricket in more recent times. They concern a dispute over the ownership of a plot of school land. A 59-year old coroner, John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played "kreckett" on the site fifty years earlier – around 1550.

By the early 1600s, village cricket was played in the English counties of Surrey, Kent and Sussex and was soon adopted as a leisure pursuit in many schools. However, the local Judiciary considered it a bad influence on young men, and in 1611 two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church!

It was a dangerous game – the first documented fatal accident related to cricket was in 1624, at Horsted Green in Sussex. Sadly, Jasper Vinall died after being struck by a bat while trying to catch the ball. Its unclear if this was an accident, or if the batsman simply put too high a price on his wicket.

The history of cricket also records how the sport first attracted gambling for significant sums of money in the 18th century. This was an unattractive, though perhaps inevitable development, but did have the benefit of being the cause for the establishment of the first Laws of Cricket in 1744.

The most famous early club was Hambledon in Hampshire, which became the headquarters of the game for about 30 years until the opening of Lords and the MCC in 1787. The MCC has been the custodian of the Laws of Cricket ever since then.

English colonialism brought cricket to other parts of the world; to North America in the 17th century, to the West Indies, India and Australia in the 18th century, and to New Zealand and South Africa in the 19th Century. The USA played Canada in the first international match in 1844.

The game developed into today’s club, county and international structure through the 20th century. The International Cricket Conference (ICC) has become the global governing body, while the MCC remains the custodian of the rules.

When you play cricket on the beach, in the garden, or even for your club or county you are upholding a very long tradition. You may have thought that the old cry of injustice “its just not cricket!” is rather quaint, but there’s more to it than this. A game that has taken over a thousand years to develop deserves a great deal of respect!

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