HISTORY OF CRICKET

Cricket, England’s national summer sport, which is now played throughout the world, particularly in Australia, India, Pakistan, the West Indies, and the British Isles.

Cricket is played with a bat and ball and involves two competing sides (teams) of 11 players. The field is oval with a rectangular area in the middle, known as the pitch, that is 22 yards (20.12 metres) by 10 feet (3.04 metres) wide. Two sets of three sticks, called wickets, are set in the ground at each end of the pitch. Across the top of each wicket lie horizontal pieces called bails. The sides take turns at batting and bowling(pitching); each turn is called an “innings” (always plural). Sides have one or two innings each, depending on the prearranged duration of the match, the object being to score the most runs. The bowlers, delivering the ball with a straight arm, try to break (hit) the wicket with the ball so that the bails fall. This is one of several ways that the batsman is dismissed, or put out. A bowler delivers six balls at one wicket (thus completing an “over”), then a different player from his side bowls six balls to the opposite wicket. The batting side defends its wicket.

Origin

Cricket is believed to have begun possibly as early as the 13th century as a game in which country boys bowled at a tree stump or at the hurdle gate into a sheep pen. This gate consisted of two uprights and a crossbar resting on the slotted tops; the crossbar was called a bail and the entire gate a wicket. The fact that the bail could be dislodged when the wicket was struck made this preferable to the stump, which name was later applied to the hurdle uprights. Early manuscripts differ about the size of the wicket, which acquired a third stump.the pitch—the area between the wickets—was 22 yards long.

The ball, once presumably a stone, has remained much the same since the 17th century. Its modern weight of between 5.5 and 5.75 ounces  was established in 1774.

The primitive bat was no doubt a shaped branch of a tree, resembling a modern hockey stick but considerably longer and heavier. The change to a straight bat was made to defend against length bowling, which had evolved with cricketers in Hambledon, a small village in southern England. The bat was shortened in the handle and straightened and broadened in the blade, which led to  forward play,cutting and driving. As bowling technique was not very advanced during this period, batting dominated bowling .

the earliest reference to an 11-a-side match, played in Sussex for a stake of 50 guineas.  Kent met Surrey in the first recorded intercounty match at Dartford, and it is probable that about this time a code of laws (rules) existed for the conduct of the game, although the earliest known version of such rules . Sources suggest that cricket was limited to the southern counties of England , but its popularity grew and eventually spread to London, notably to the Artillery Ground, Finsbury, which saw a famous match between Kent and All-England . Heavy betting and disorderly crowds were common at matches.

he aforementioned Hambledon Club, playing in Hampshire on Broadhalfpenny Down, was the predominant cricket force in the second half before the rise of the  (MCC) in London. Formed from a cricket club that played at White Conduit Fields, the club moved to LORD'S in St. Marylebone borough in 1787 and became the MCC and in the following year published its first revised code of laws. Lord’s, which was named after its founder, Thomas Lord, has had three locations over its history.

 the first match of North counties versus South counties was played, providing clear evidence of the spread of cricket.  the All-England XI, founded by William Clarke of Nottingham, began touring the country, and , when some of the leading professionals (including John Wisden, who later compiled the first of the famous Wisden almanacs on cricketing) seceded to form the United All-England XI, these two teams monopolized the best cricket talent until the rise of count cricket. They supplied the players for the first English touring team overseas .

Until early in the 19th century all bowling was underhand, and most bowlers favoured the high-tossed lob. Next came “the round-arm revolution,” in which many bowlers began raising the point at which they released the ball. Controversy raged furiously, and in 1835 the MCC rephrased the law to allow the hand to be raised as high as the shoulder. The new style led to a great increase in pace, or bowling speed. Gradually bowlers raised the hand higher and higher in defiance of the law. Matters were brought to a head in 1862 when an England team playing against Surrey left the field at London’s Kennington Oval in protest over a “no ball” call (i.e., an umpire’s decision that the bowler has thrown an illegal pitch). Once the bowler was allowed to release overhand, the ball could then reach speeds above 90 mph (145 km/hr). Though this is not as fast as the pitching speed in baseball, cricket has an additional twist in that the ball is usually delivered so as to bounce on the pitch (field) before the batsman can hit it. Thus, the ball may curve to the right or the left, bounce low or high, or spin toward or away from the batsman.

THE CRICKET COUNCIL AND THE ECB

A reorganization of English cricket took place in 1969, resulting in the end of the MCC’s long reign as the controlling body of the game, though the organization still retains responsibility for the laws. With the establishment of the Sports Council (a government agency charged with control of sports in Great Britain) and with the possibility of obtaining government aid for cricket, the MCC was asked to create a governing body for the game along the lines generally accepted by other sports in Great Britain. The Cricket Council, comprising the Test and County Cricket Board (TCCB), the National Cricket Association (NCA), and the MCC, was the result of these efforts. The TCCB, which amalgamated the Advisory County Cricket Committee and the Board of Control of Test Matches at Home, had responsibility for all first-class and minor-counties cricket in England .

INTERNATIONAL CRICKET

International cricket in the early part of the 20th century was dominated by the original members of the Imperial Cricket Conference, England, Australia, and South Africa. Later renamed the International Cricket Conference and then ICC, the ICC gradually took over more responsibility for the administration of the game and shifted its power base from west to east. When in 2005 the ICC moved its offices from Lord’s in London—home of the MCC, the game’s original rulers and still its lawmakers—to Dubai, the shift away from the old ways of governance was complete. The priorities of the game changed too. By the turn of the 21st century, only Australia and England still played Test cricket to full houses. Everywhere else, and particularly in India and Pakistan, crowds flocked to see limited-overs internationals. Test cricket became almost an afterthought. Although the power to change the laws of the game have remained with the MCC, the ICC developed its own Code of Conduct for players, officials, and administrators, which sets out disciplinary procedures and protects the spirit of the game. It also organized major international tournaments, including the one-day and Twenty20 World Cups and the Champions Trophy. In 2000 the ICC set up the Anti-Corruption Unit (renamed the Anti-Corruption Unit and Security Unit in 2003) to combat the growing threat of illegal gambling and match fixing. At the beginning of the 2010s, the ICC had 10 full members and dozens of associate and affiliate members.