History Of Cricket (17th Century)

Early Cricket (Pre 1799)

   Cricket On The Artillery Ground

There is a compromise of expert view of the cricket may are invented during Saxon or Norman times by children living within the Weald, a neighborhood of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England. The primary regard to cricket being played as an adult sport was in 1611, and within the same year, a dictionary defined cricket as a boys' game. There’s also the thought that cricket may have derived from bowls, by the intervention of a batsman trying to prevent the ball from reaching its target by hitting it away.

Village cricket had developed by the center of the 17th century and therefore the first English “county teams” were formed within the last half of the century, as “local experts” from village cricket were employed because the earliest professionals. The primary known game during which the teams use county names is in 1709.

                             Early village cricket

In the earlier half of the 18th Century cricket established itself as a number one sport in London and therefore the south-eastern counties of England. Its spread was limited by the constraints of travel, but it had been slowly gaining popularity in other parts of England and Women’s Cricket dates back to the 1745, when the primary known match was played in Surrey.

In 1744, the primary Laws of Cricket were written and subsequently amended in 1774, when innovations like LBW, a third stump, - the center stump and a maximum bat width were added. The codes were involved by the “Star and Garter Club” whose members ultimately founded the famous Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's in 1787. MCC immediately became the custodian of the Laws and has made revisions ever since then to the present day.

          The first instances of cricket                              

Rolling the ball along the bottom was superseded sometime after 1760. when bowlers began to pitch the ball and in response thereto innovation the straight bat replaced the old “hockey-stick” sort of bat. The Hambledon Club in Hampshire was the focus of the sport for about thirty years until the formation of M.C.C .and the opening of Lord's Cricket Ground in 1787.

Cricket was introduced to North America via English colonies as early because the 17th century, and within the 18th century it arrived in other parts of the world. It had been introduced to the West Indies by colonists and to India by British Malay Archipelago Company mariners. It arrived in Australia almost as soon as colonisation began in 1788 and therefore the sport reached New Zealand and South Africa within the early years of the 19th century.