History of cricket to 1725

The earliest definite reference to the sport of cricket is dated 17 January 1597 (Old Style), equating to 27 January 1598 in modern New Style dates. It is a deposition in the records of a legal case at Guildford, Surrey, regarding usage of a parcel of land. John Derrick, a coroner, testified that he had played cricket on the land when he was a boy in about 1550. Derrick's testimony is confirmation that the sport was being played by the middle of the 16th century, but its true origin is unknown. All that is known with a fair degree of certainty is that its beginning was earlier than 1550, probably somewhere in south-east England within the counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. There have been suggestions that it can be traced to Flemish immigrants then resident in the area. The origin of the word cricket could derive from the Flemish word krick(-e), meaning a stick.

The sparse information available about the early years suggests that it may have been a children's game in the 16th century but, by about 1610, it had become an adult pastime. A dictionary published in 1611 describes a type of cricket bat. The earliest known match was played around that time, but fewer than thirty are recorded from then to 1725. Similarly, the names of few players, teams, and venues of the period have been recorded. The earliest matches played by English parish teams are examples of village cricket. There were no newspaper reports of matches until the end of the seventeenth century, and so the primary sources are court records and private diaries; hence games were rarely recorded.

During the reign of Charles I, the gentry took an increased interest as patrons, and occasionally as players. A big attraction for them was the opportunity that the game offered for gambling, and this escalated in the years following the Restoration when cricket in London and the south-eastern counties of England evolved into a popular social activity. The patrons staged lucrative eleven-a-side matches featuring the earliest professional players. Meanwhile, English colonists had introduced cricket to North America, and the sailors of the East India Company had taken it to the Indian subcontinent.

In the first quarter of the 18th century, more information about cricket became available as the growing newspaper industry took an interest. While impeded by poor transport links, the game was beginning to reach parts of England outside the home counties by the early 18th century. By 1725, wealthy patrons—such as Edwin Stead; Charles Lennox, 2nd Duke of Richmond; and Sir William Gage—were forming teams of county strength in Kent and Sussex. The earliest-known great players, including William Bedle and Thomas Waymark, were active. Cricket was attracting large, vociferous crowds, and the matches were social occasions at which gambling and alcoholic drinks were additional attractions.

Origins and etymology

The most widely accepted theory about the origin of cricket is that it developed in early medieval times to the south and south-east of London in the geographical areas of the North Downs, the South Downs, and the Weald. The counties of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey were therefore the sport's earliest locations, and it was from these that it reached London, where its lasting popularity was ensured, and other southern English counties like Berkshire, Essex, Hampshire, and Middlesex.

A number of words in common use in the 16th century are thought to be possible sources for cricket's name. In the earliest known reference to the sport in 1598 (N.S.), it is called creckett. Given the strong medieval trade connections between south-east England and the County of Flanders when the latter belonged to the Duchy of Burgundy, the name may have been derived from the Middle Dutch krick(-e), meaning a stick, or the Old English cryce, meaning a crutch, staff, or stick. In what may be an early reference to the sport, a 1533 poem attributed to John Skelton describes Flemish weavers as "kings of crekettes", a word of apparent Middle Dutch origin. In Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), he derived cricket from cryce. In Old French, the word criquet seems to have meant a kind of club or stick, though this may have been the origin of croquet. The first mention of criquet in France is in a letter of grievance to King Louis XI in October 1478, following a riot in Liettres. Another possible source is the Middle Dutch word krickstoel, meaning a long low stool used for kneeling in church, the shape of which resembled the two-stump wicket used in early cricket. According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of the University of Bonn, cricket derives from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockey, met de (krik ket)sen (i.e., "with the stick chase").

Cricket is known to have been played by children in the 16th century, and it is possible that it was, for many generations, essentially a children's game. It has been suggested that the invention of the game could have happened in Norman (1066–1154) or Plantagenet (1154–1485) times, or even in Anglo-Saxon times before the Norman Conquest in 1066. Historian David Underdown rejects speculation, however, and asserts that the only thing which can definitely be said about the origin of cricket is that its earliest record is a testimony in a late 16th-century court case, which proves it was played by children in Surrey in the middle of that century.

Despite some similarities, there is no evidence of cricket having evolved from another bat-and-ball sport and, equally, no evidence that any other bat-and-ball sport evolved from cricket. Part of the reasoning for this is that, unlike other games with batters, bowlers, and fielders—such as stoolball, rounders, and baseball—cricket can only be played on relatively short grass, especially as the ball was delivered along the ground until the 1760s, so forest clearings and land where sheep had grazed would have been suitable places to play.

Among alternative theories of origin is one by the writer Andrew Lang, who claimed in 1912 that cricket evolved from a bat-and-ball game which may have been played in Dál Riata (modern Argyll and County Antrim) as early as the 6th century, but this claim has been dismissed, by Anthony Bateman among others, in terms of "Lang's idiosyncratic belief in the Celtic origin of cricket". It is true that cricket is one of many bat-and-ball sports existing worldwide which have no known origin. Others are the Irish sport of hurling, and Scottish shinty. Golf and hockey are other British ball games involving a club or stick, while croquet was apparently imported from France and, globally, there are games such as Sweden's brännboll, Italy's lippa, India's gilli-danda, Finland's pesäpallo, and Samoa's kilikiti. There is a 1523 reference to stoolball at a designated field in Oxfordshire; this may then have been a generic term for any game in which a ball is somehow hit with a bat or stick. Eighteenth-century references to stoolball in conjunction with cricket clearly indicate that it was a separate activity.

Earliest definite references

The earliest definite reference to cricket being played in England, its home country, is in evidence given at a 1598 legal case, concerning ownership of a parcel of land, which confirms that it was played on common land in Guildford, Surrey, around 1550. The court in Guildford heard on 17 January 1597 Old Style (27 January 1598 New Style) from a 59-year-old coroner, John Derrick, who gave witness that when he was a scholar fifty years earlier at the Free School of Guildford:

hee and diverse of his fellows did runne and play [on the common land] at creckett and other plaies

This confirmed that the sport was played there by schoolboys c. 1550. Cricket is the only one of the plaies (i.e., games) to be specifically named.

In 1598, there was a reference to cricket in an Italian-English dictionary by Giovanni Florio. His definition of the word sgillare was: "to make a noise as a cricket, to play cricket-a-wicket, and be merry". Florio is the first writer known to have defined cricket in terms of both an insect and a game. In a later edition of his dictionary in 1611, Florio infers that to play cricket-a-wicket has sexual associations with references to frittfritt, defined as cricket-a-wicket, or gigaioggie, and dibatticare, defined as "to thrum a wench lustily till the bed cry giggaioggie".

The development of village cricket: 1610–1660