Talk:History of cricket/Archive 1

Rationale for page
Is this page really necessary, much of the history is covered in Test cricket and I think ODI stuff is also covered on its own page. Lisiate 00:00, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I'd say that history material from the Test and ODI pages should be consolidated and moved here. It forms a more coherent story together. This is also a place for the origins of cricket, which was a bit out of place in the main article. The structure of the cricket articles is a bit haphazard and I think some consolidation of subtopics is a good idea. How about I move all the history stuff here and then see how it looks? dmmaus 01:25, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I've done the consolidation and added a significant amount of new material (codification of rules, rise of one-day cricket, World Cup, banning of South Africa). There's heaps more to add too. dmmaus 03:00, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Excellent - well done. Much more coherent.  The cricket articles really do need thinking about - after a little work on fielder yesterday, I found Fielding positions in cricket today :-/ -- ALoan 10:01, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

teri ma ki chut —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.161.73.23 (talk) 09:10, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Underarm dating
The text implies only underarm bowling existed prior to 1864. Can I challenge that? There are several John Leech cartoons in the 1850s complaining about the advent of "round arm" bowling (that it was so much faster) so if the rules changed in 1864 they must have trailed practice in games by at least a decade. --BozMo|talk 23:00, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC) see e.g. 1854 Punch Sketch


 * You're right - the rules did trail practice. Just as some bowlers today challenge umpires, so they did in the 1850s and 1860s (throwing was also a big problem then too!). Sometimes the bowlers got no-balled for breaking the rules, often they did not. jguk 10:27, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * This is actually a difficult point to address because a legal underarm delivery had the ball released below the waist. Round arm bowling has the ball delivered at the side of the body. It is possible to deliver a round arm delivery with the ball released below the waist, though it is much more natural to release it higher by this method. The waist height has only been defined in the Laws of Cricket as of April 2019. So, it would have been quite easy for bowlers to push the limits. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.191.99.116 (talk) 10:35, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

The change in 1864 came after Wilsher, the most notable and prevalent of the illegal overarm bowlers, was no-balled six times in a match. Finally the MCC had to give way to practice! jguk 19:14, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Illegality of cricket?
I have removed the reference to cricket being illegal from Cromwell's day up to a 1748 decision by the Court of the King's Bench. I have just started reading A Social History of English Cricket by Derek Birley - and even though I'm only up to the 3rd chapter, I'd heartily recommend it - It was the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1999. It doesn't refer to cricket being illegal at all, and the only reference to a 1748 court case I've seen so far is to a magistrate's decision. I have amended the article in line with this, jguk 19:20, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

India Debut...
"Finally, England matched up against one of its own colonies, India, on June 23, 1932, at Lord's." Is this necessary? Surely the West Indies were one of England's colonies (or indeed a collection of) and arguably Australia, South Africa, New Zealand; although Dominions in a legal sense, were colonies where cricket had taken root. Seems slightly misleading.
 * agree with that. They were all colonies.

I thought that there was a specific town in Hampshire, England that was called the home of cricket and where an old form of the game is still (once a year) played. It differs from modern cricket in that there are 12 players, they use curved sticks similar to hockey sticks and bowl underarm. I am surprised to see that there is no reference to this in the article. Also there is no reference to 'Bat and Trap' which is an old pub game with a more than passing resemblance to cricket still played in parts of Kent. I think there is an article on this sport on Wiki already.GordyB 10:17, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * You'll be thinking of the village of Hambledon. Some aristocratic bigwigs started a club 2 miles away from the village. It lost its dominance after its key members joined the MCC (around 1787, when Lord's was founded). I'm not sure about this "old form of the game". The original Hambledon Club died centuries ago - although some have recently restarted it, jguk 18:31, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Malcolm

 * Sorry, new here, but while reading Dominic Malcolm's Globalizing Cricket: Englishness, Empire and Identity, it was mentioned that there have been claims that cricket may have Celtic origins and that it was played by Dalraid Scots in Northern Ireland around 500 A.D (see Lang 1912, cited in Bateman 2009 via Malcolm 2013). Furthermore, there are also accounts that the French may have invented it, and that Cricket derives from the word "criquet" meaning wooden gate. Therefore, shouldn't history of cricket pages mention the possibility that cricket may not be entirely an English invention? At it's most basic cricket is a "bat and ball game" with similar games present in different parts of the world, i.e. baseball (see Malcolm 2013). So-Van51 (talk) 16:37, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * There have been several of these "theories" over the years and they are either speculation or have in some cases been proven to be hoaxes or pure garbage. If you people will read History of cricket to 1725 very carefully without just inserting Mr Malcolm's views anywhere you feel like it, you will see that it already covers the origin theory quite adequately in an objective manner and relying mainly on the long-established reputable sources that are recognised by subject-matter experts. Mr Malcolm is NOT recognised as such and if his conclusions are as emphatic as your edits suggest, then he should be ignored. Of course ball games exist worldwide. The article has always said so and the fact of the matter is that we do not know if cricket evolved from some other sport like stoolball or vice-versa. Therefore the article deals with all the theories by wrapping them up and citing the most obvious examples without going off into the wide blue yonder. Unless you can make some useful addition to the article and keep it in context and within the proper perspective, I suggest you leave well alone. The article in question is rated WP:GA for good reasons, one of them being that it is considered complete; also that is both accurate and objective. Jack | talk page 17:34, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I welcome your interest in cricket history, but if you've only read Malcolm's book without reading others that may have different opinions then you may not get a rounded view of the subject. It's worth mentioning that baseball actually originated in England before being taken to America, so doesn't support the argument. For instance the game is mentioned in "Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen, written around 1800. Cricket, baseball and stoolball are clearly all related, but whether one of those was the original game or if they all developed from a now long extinct common ancestor, we don't know. JH (talk page) 18:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Missing Text...
Ummmm, why are there 2 subject titles under 'Controversies' that have no text under them at all? I was gonna delete on the spot, but this just seemed too strange to have no reasoning behind it.

Cricket and the USA
I had read that cricket was more popular than baseball in the USA up until the civil war. Can anyone add to that?


 * I don't know about that, but here's an interesting article with heaps of information on early USA and Canadian cricket and tours if anyone's interested. -- Ian &equiv; talk 08:41, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Pro-Cricket Reference Under 'The Future' Sub-Heading Needs Updating
I must add that under 'The Future' sub-heading it mentions that the Pro-Cricket league started in the US in 2004, but obviously that needs updating because not long after the Pro Cricket League being established it folded/ended for good after only 1 season. I generally don't follow cricket happenings in the US though, and don't live in the US, so I can't give much further detail unfourtunately.

Match fixing scandals
The article says absolutely nothing about the match fixing scandals in the 1990s and 2000. This is unbelievable considering how many teams it affected (Pakistan, India, South Africa and Australia, remember Tim May and Mark Waugh). It must be included soon. Also, the article does not talk about doping in the sport, or of Bob Woolmer's death and the assorted speculation during CWC 2007.203.188.253.179 (talk) 12:26, 25 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Why don't you write something yourself? There ought to be brief mentions of the topics that you mention, but an article on the whole history of the game has too much ground to cover to go into much detail. Howerver there should be links to the main articles on these topics: Betting controversies in cricket, Category:Doping cases in cricket and Bob Woolmer. JH (talk page) 19:35, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I normally try to ignore IP address input but what is unbelievable is that some people think history is what happened last week. The article's scope is a period of four hundred years and rather a lot has happened in all that time, plus we are limited to 35kb. Betting scandals date back to the 17th century (see all the references to gambling); matchfixing was a major controversy in 1817 when Lambert was banned for life; so what's new? Why should the article talk about doping which is a minor problem in cricket compared with the likes of athletics and cycling? Bob Woolmer's death was tragic but so were the deaths of hundreds of other cricketers over 400 years: most tragic of all have been the players who were killed on the field of play. As for CWC 2007, do you honestly think history will want to remember a fiasco like that? --The Ghost | séance 09:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Article rating
I've just made use of the recently adopted B-class criteria to rate the article that was formerly B-class and top importance. The criteria don't affect the importance so I've left that as top. But using the B-class criteria, the article fails the test because it doesn't meet criteria 1 and 5. These are:


 * 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations.
 * 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams.

Although I don't like inline citations personally (because I think they are over-used), I have to agree that this article is short of references and that is something I should have addressed when I rewrote it last year. Leave that with me.

As for point 5, I'm not really sure how much supporting material is required. An infobox is irrelevant here and really it is only images that could usefully be added. There are currently four, plus the small template at the bottom of the page. Is four sufficient for B-class or should there be more? --BlackJack | talk page 06:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Four seems sufficient to me. JH (talk page) 08:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * On reflection, I agree. Each article will have to be considered individually.  I've altered Q5 above to a "yes".
 * Which leaves the inline citations........ --BlackJack | talk page 10:40, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Edit request on 19 December 2011
117.197.235.197 (talk) 11:47, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * You haven't specified what change you think should be made. JH (talk page) 18:07, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Irrelevant information
The sentence "In medieval times, the Weald was populated by small farming and metal-working communities" in the first paragraph of the section "Origin" is irrelevant to cricket itself. It relates only to the Weald, which is already linked. If the reader wants to know about the Weald, then he or she would read the article "Weald" instead of the article "Cricket". As such, it needs to be removed. 71.254.92.234 (talk) 18:51, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Done. Thanks for pointing that out. Jack | talk page 19:26, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

There's also some duplication in that section. Successive sentences (though in separate paragraphs and separated by a reference) read: ''It is generally believed that cricket survived as a children's game for many centuries before it was increasingly taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th century.... It is quite likely that cricket was devised by children and survived for many generations as essentially a children’s game.'' JH (talk page) 20:51, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Don't know how I missed that. I read the whole section earlier and just didn't see it! Anyway, it's fixed now. Thanks, John. Jack | talk page 23:38, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Flemish origin
Cricket was invented by the Flemish, or was it the Scottish? Poet John Skelton in 1533 wrote about Flemish men Playing 'met de krik ketsen' a well known modern phrase still in use today- B.J.Monahan (talk) 04:47, 14 October 2013‎ (UTC)

(Item transposed here by Bjenks from head of page where it displaced some regular content)
 * Chris Mason's tongue-in-cheek 2009 BBC item (cited) records unproved "claims"—highly speculative—that the word cricket derives from a Flemish phrase 'met de krik ketsen' (certainly NOT borrowed by Skelton!) which means to 'chase a ball with a curved stick'. The same "research" was amusingly cited in June 2009 in celebration of England's defeat by Holland in the World Twenty20. It is, of course, well known that modern English is descended from a multiplicity of languages and dialects imported by European invaders between at least 55 BC and 1066 AD. Bjenks (talk) 03:34, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
 * In trying to follow this up, I learned that the BBC source Heiner Gillmeister is indeed a genuine academic writer who has a contribution entitled What Literary Works Can Tell Us about Sports and Games: A Fifteenth-Century Example in a reputable-looking Canadian work, Sport and Culture in Early Modern Europe. (That paper does not include his take on cricket.) The cited Australian Paul Campbell is proving harder to find. Bjenks (talk) 04:55, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

''The complete excerpt of the referenced poem, which I have obtained by emailing Heiner Gillmeister is as follows:

Arte thou the hiest pryst,

And vicar vnto christ?

No, no, I say, thou lyest!

Thou arte a cursed crekar,

A crafty vpp-crepar!

Thou arte the devils vicar!

A privye purse pikar,

By lawes and by rites,

for sowles and for sprites:

O lorde of Ipocrites,

Nowe shut vpp your wickettes,

And clape to your clickettes!

A! farewell, kings of crekettes!

For nowe the tyme falles

To speake of Cardinalles,

That kepe ther holy halles

With Towres and walles.

Be they not Carnalles,

(Page 218)

The text is in Alexander Dyce, ed., The Poetical Works of John Skelton, 2 vols., London: Rodd 1843, vol. 2. [From BM Manuscript Lansdowne 794, c. 1534] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.191.99.116 (talk) 10:14, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 January 2014
117.241.177.71 (talk) 11:51, 18 January 2014 (UTC)twenty balls in a over

Furthermore, you have not cited any reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to any article. - Arjayay (talk) 12:45, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: You have made no edit request in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ", so it is unclear what you want added or removed.

Origin of cricket
While I don't think any particular people could have 'invented' a game (more like they adapted existing games or games seen from other peoples), I came across an old Persian/Afghan game (i.e. used by people who lived in that and surrounding areas) called ′alak dolak′. I'm sure there are many old games which are similar to cricket, or alak dolak, etc (anybody please add more). I think it's difficult to draw a line from which it's possible to say that a particular game has now been *invented* without any preceding influence, so at least these other ancient games should be mentioned under cricket's origin or history. It would be nice to see information to be consolidated as it becomes internationally available with the world-wide collaboration of people from many nations/histories. This could also help the discussion about Flemish origin. I propose this sentence to be added at the start of the Origin of Cricket section: ″Many ancient games bear resemblance to modern cricket, for example alak dolak, [add other similar ancient games], etc. In more recent times, similar games in Europe included...″ What do you think? 115.70.85.100 (talk) 01:22, 29 March 2015 (UTC)


 * That's very interesting. There's a very brief Wikipedia article on Alak Dolak. From the description given there, it seems to me that the resemblance to cricket is pretty minimal. JH (talk page) 07:25, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 August 2015
110.20.33.206 (talk) 08:58, 18 August 2015 (UTC) If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ". Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 09:13, 18 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: as you have not requested a change.

"Criquet"
This word is believed by subject experts like Derek Birley and others to be Old French for a club or stick; it is held to be the likely origin of croquet, not cricket. See History of cricket to 1725. If we are going to have speculative earliest dates in what is after all a history article, then the earliest of them all is Thursday, 10 March 1300 in the Julian calendar when the son of Longshanks was playing at "creag". Some people think "creag" is Olde English for cricket but it is generally held to be a precursor of "craic". There are several of these speculative claims but the earliest known definite record of cricket was on Monday, 17 January 1597 (Julian date again) and this confirms that the game was played c.1550 by children in Surrey. This is the only "earliest date" that is valid in a history article because it is the only one that is fact and not speculation. Jack | talk page 13:09, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That's right, though it's fine to have the speculative dates so long as they are identified as speculative and therefore differentiated from the "true" and verifiable date. Johnlp (talk) 14:24, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, and the earliest of these dates is 1300. I really cannot see any point in having more than that in a historical article. We have the earliest known "possible" date and the earliest known "definite" date, which together provide a balance and indicate the period in which the game probably was created. I'm assuming it was not created by the Guildford children, as has been suggested by some! Jack | talk page 14:31, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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The spirit of the game: New section on the history of the cricket ethos
By the start of the twentieth century, cricket had became synonymous with a code of sportsman-like behaviour. To say to someone, "that's not cricket!" was to deliver a moral reproof against the spirit of their actions. "Cricket" had become a metaphor for the best of British behaviour. A history of the game needs to include some reference to the development of this ethos and its modern transformation.

It was the Victorian era that promoted the moralistic cricketing ethos; it was nurtured in the same English private school culture that produced rugby. It was part of the Victorian era christian code of "gentlemanly behaviour" and "muscular christianity". The emphasis was on building "character"; it was not winning but "how you played the game" that was important. This was the ethos that became identified with cricket and "good sportsmanship".

Many books and articles have been written about the decline of this culture, and some comentators argue that modern, commercial cricket has lost its moral compass. This ethos is part of the history of the game. For example, the preamble to the MCC's laws of cricket speaks specifically about "the spirit of the game". The famous body-line bowling controversy in the Australia-England test in the thirties centred around a debate over whether body-line bowling contravened the spirit of the game. Could someone familiar with this historical background write a section on the spirit of cricket for inclusion in the history of the game?Asd154 (talk) 22:28, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

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Origin in Bat and Trap?
When I was a Bat and trap player in Kent in the 1970's, I was told that cricket was a development from Bat and trap, a game that has its origins in the early 14th century. Is there any truth to this? Piedmont (talk) 15:10, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I confess I'd never heard of bat and trap. As the origins of cricket are shrouded in mystery, it's possible that it's true, but AFAIK there's no evidence for it. There are a whole slew of bat and ball games that seem to be related, including stoolball, rounders and baseball as well as cricket and bat and trap, but we have no way of knowing which of them came first. Or it could be that another game, long extinct, was the common ancestor of all of them. JH (talk page) 18:39, 2 November 2019 (UTC)