How did the game of cricket originate?
Cricket is one of the biggest influences in India. It has become so popular so rapidly that no introduction is needed. The British brought the game here, so Indians have been playing cricket pre-independence. Test cricket started in India in 1932. Not too late, since it had started in West Indies in 1928 and New Zealand in 1930. After the Second World War, Pakistan started playing cricket, joining test matches in 1952. Interesting new countries keep joining the game – Bangladesh debuted in 2000 – Ireland and Afghanistan presented their test teams in 2018. Cricket is a multi-billion dollar empire in tickets, endorsements, betting, mobile games, tourism, and just so much more. But how did cricket begin its journey? Let’s look at that story today.
Origin of cricket
According to popular theory, cricket started as a children’s game played in south-eastern England. There is some evidence to support this. In 1597, there was a court case in Guilford, and one of the witnesses was a 59-year-old man, who stated that he and his friends used to play cricket during school years. Given his age, cricket must have been played by school boys in the Surrey region around 1550.
The other theory is that it came from Europe, from the Flanders region of Belgium. Heiner Gillmeister, an European language expert from Bonn University, claimed that the word ‘cricket’ derives from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockey, ‘met de (krik ket) sen’ (literally, ‘with the stick chase’). He suggested that the sport might have started with Flemish boys playing with a stick and ball, gotten popular, and travelled to England.
When were the first matches played?
In 1611, two British men were fined for failing to attend church on Easter Sunday, because they were playing cricket. Around the same time, the first organised cricket match was played in Chevening, Kent, UK. The game clearly caught on very well in semi-rural England, since we had the first cricket death in1624, when a player called Jasper Vinall died in Sussex because another player accidentally hit him on the head. In 1697, we have another record from Sussex telling us that players got 50 guineas each for playing a big match. After the 17th century, cricket spread globally through colonisers.