Paris Team which toured
England in 1886
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The origin of cricket is very imprecise, and many theories have been put forward suggesting its origins. Extensive studies and research have been conducted to outline its history and they have come out with different versions. However it is commonly accepted that the game originated from a very old leisure activity indulged by shepherds.
The shepherds used crook and other farm equipments to hit a ball like deceive which used to be made up of wool or stone.
The first evidence of cricket being played was recorded in the year 1550, by the pupils of Royal Grammar School, Guildford. In the year 1611 it is reported that two young men from Sussex were punished for playing cricket instead of going to the church. The first match is recorded to have been played at Cox heath in Kent in the year 1646. |
There is an evidence of cricket being played in Surrey, England in the mid-16th century, and they were involved in the first inter-County match against Kent in 1709.
In 1744, the first-known version of the Laws of Cricket stipulated the length of the pitch as 22 yards, and the width of the bat was limited to its present 4 and a quarter inches in 1771.
Leg before wicket was introduced three years later, and the first six-seamed ball was manufactured by Dukes in 1780. Thomas Lord’s third ground opened on its present site in St. John’s Wood in 1814, and the first official international match between Canada and the United States, was played 30 years later.
The Marylebone Cricket Club (formed in 1787) sanctioned overhand bowling in 1864, the year John Wisden’s The Cricketer’s Almanack was first published.
Cricket was first observed in India in 1721 being played by English merchant sailors near Kutch (north-west Gujarat). 30 years later, the British Army took on English settlers in the first recorded match, and the Calcutta Cricket Club (the second oldest in the world) was established in 1792. |
