Origin of Cricket

Cricket is a game which is played with great passion and enthusiasm from our locality to the international level. Everyone likes this game from children to old people. After all, cricket is such an interesting and wonderful game. That is why It is known as one of the most popular sports in the world and many of you must be cricket fans too. But even after having so much interest, do you know about the origin of cricket ? If you don’t know, you will definitely know today.

Today we will discuss about the entire history of this game. And we will know when, where and how cricket started and how it emerged as a popular sport.

Origin of Cricket

It is believed that cricket was created during Saxon or Norman times by the childrens living in South East England. Where cricket was played as a boy’s sport. But no evidence has been found that when and how this game started there. That is why various theories were created regarding the origin of cricket. In which many things were said about its beginning and trend. It has been said in the most prominent theory that this game was played in the west minister and Newenden of England by king edward the second in the early 14th century.

But at that time this game was not popular with the name of cricket but known as creag. After the fourteenth century, gradually cricket became very popular among children. By 17th century, this game started becoming popular among children as well as adults and there was great joy and enthusiasm. With this, all the adults started participating in it.

Apart from this theory, there is another theory of the origin of cricket and it says that cricket is the modern form of bowls played in ancient times. Bowls was a game under which the batsman had to prevent the ball from hitting the stump. For which he used to hit the ball very fast. Due to which the ball used to fall very far.

Apart from these theories, if we look at the first written evidence of cricket, then we get it from a court case of 1597. Which was based on a ground fight in Guildford, England. For the first time in this court case, cricket was called creckett. In fact cricket was mentioned in this court case. Sixty-nine year old John Derick gave his statement that he and his school friends used to play cricket fifty years ago on this disputed land. Derick’s statement clearly shows that cricket was played even in the sixteenth century and its official documents from this court case are considered to be the earliest written evidence of cricket. However, these documents were only evidence that cricket was a child’s game. It was popular in form. But we get evidence of when it was adopted by adults from a report of the year 1611.

According to this report, two men living in Sussex, England were prosecuted because both of them were playing cricket in the street instead of attending church. Apart from this, for the first time in the dictionary of England, the word cricket was added. In which it was defined that cricket is a game which was earlier popular as a boy’s game and is now played by adults as well.

So this was the matter of the origin of cricket. We will discuss about the history of the cricket in next post so stay tuned.