STORY OF

CRICKET

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CRICKETCricket grew out of many stick and ball games played in England 500 years ago, under a variety of different rules. The word bat is an old English word that simply means stick or club. By the seventeenth century it became popular as a district game.Till the eighteenth century, bats were roughly the shape of an hockey stick, curving outwards at the bottom. There was a simple reason of this: the bowl was bowled underarm, along the ground and the curve at the end of the bat gave the batsman the best chance in making a contact.

Historical Development of Cricket

The social and economic history of England in the eighteenth centuries shaped the game and gave cricket its unique nature. For example one of the peculiarities of the test cricket is that the match can go for five days and still end in a draw. No other modern team takes even half as much time to complete.

Another curious characteristic of cricket is that the length of the pitch is specified 22 yards but the size or shape of the ground is not. In cricket it’s a circular ground but like football hockey its an oval or rectangular ground.

Cricket was the earliest modern team sport to be codified, which is another way of saying that cricket itself gave rules and regulations so that it could be played in a uniform and standardised way well before team games like soccer and hockey . The first written Laws of Cricket were drawn up in 1744. they stated , the principals shall choose amongst the gentlemen present two umpires who will absolutely decide all disputes. The stumps must be 22 inches high and the bail across them six inches. The ball must be between 5 and 6 ounces, and the two sets of the stumps 22 yards apart.

Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC)The world’s first cricket club was formed in Hambledon in the 1760s and the Marylebone cricket club was found in 1787. in 1788, the MCC published its first revision of the laws and became the guardian of cricket regulations. The MCC’s revision of the laws brought in the series of changes in the game that occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century. During the 1760s and 1770s it became common to pitch the ball through air, rather than roll it along the ground.5

This change gave the bowlers the option of length, description through the air, plus increased pace. It also opened new possibilities for spin and swing. In response, the batsmen had to master timing and shot selection. One immediate result was the replacement of the curved bat with the straight one. All of this raised the premium of skill and reduced the influence of rough ground and brute force. The weight of the ball was limited to 5 ounces, and width of the bat to four inches.

Cricket and Victorian England

The organization of cricket in England reflected the English society. The rich who could afford to play it for pleasures and the poor who played for a living were called amateurs and the poor who played for a living were called professionals. The rich were the amateurs of two reasons. One , they considered sport a kind of leisure. To play for the pleasure of playing and not for money was an aristocratic value. Two, there was not enough money in the game for the rich to be interested. The wages of the professionals were paid by patronage or subscription

While some English team games like hockey and football became international games, played all over the world, cricket remained a colonial game, limited to countries that have once been a part of pat of British empire. The pre-industrial oddness of cricket made it a hard game to export. While the British official brought the game to colonies, they made little effort to spread the game, especially in colonial territories where the subjects of the empire were mainly non-white, such as India and the west indies.

CRICKET ,RACE & RELIGIONCricket in colonial India was organized on the

principle of race and religion. The record we have of cricket being played in India is from1721, an account of recreational cricket played by English sailors in Camay. The first Indian club, the Calcutta Cricket Club, was established in 1792. through the eighteenth century, cricket in India was almost a wholly sport played by British military men and civil men in all-white clubs and gymkhanas. Playing cricket in privacy of these cricket clubs was more than just fun: it was also escape from strangeness, discomfort and danger of their stay in India.

The Parsi TeamThe Parsees were the earliest local community in India to take up cricket. They are known to have played the game since about 1840 and the first Parsee cricket club - the Oriental cricket club- was founded in 1848, the Parsees played their first match against Bombay Gymkhana. The earliest plan at a tour of England by a Parsee team was made by A.B. Patel in 1878. It fell through when Patel got involved in a libel suit and was unable to proceed with the plans.A few years later Patel, with the help of B.B. Baria and Dr. Dhunjishaw Patel, made another attempt to organise the tour. C. W. Alcock, the Secretary of the Surrey Cricket Club served as the agent for the team in England. Robert Henderson, a Surrey professional, acted as the coach.

The members of the team were:

1. Dr D.H Patel(captain) 12. S.H Harvar 2. B.B Baria 13. D.D Khambatta3. J.M Morenas 14. P.D Dastur4. A.R Limboowala 15. B.P Balla5. M Framji6. M .P Banaji7. S.N Bhedwar8. A.C Major9. P.C Major10. J.Pochkhanavala11. S.Bejonji

Modern cricket is dominated by Tests and one-day internationals, played between national teams. The players who become famous, who live on in the memories of cricket’s public, are those who have played for their country. The players Indian fans remember from the era of the Pentangular and the Quadrangular are those who were fortunate enough to play Test cricket. C.K. Nayudu, an outstanding Indian batsman of his time, lives on in the popular imagination when some of his great contemporaries like Palwankar Vithal and Palwankar Baloo have been forgotten because his career lasted long enough for him to play Test cricket for India while theirs did not. Even though Nayudu was past his cricketing prime when he played for India in its first Test matches against England starting in 1932, his place in India’s cricket history is assured because he was the country’s first Test captain.

MODERN TRANSFORMATION

Media and Cricket TodayWhile cricket was first televised in the 1950’s, it

was in 1978 that cricket took on a new feel and a new audience. In 1978 the cricket world was shocked by the revelation that 35 of the world’s top players had signed with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket (WSC), broadcast via television due to widespread discontent over conditions and pay.Broadcast in competition with the ABC’s coverage of ICC cricket competitions, WSC revolutionized the game with coloured clothing, white balls and a combination of one-day and day-night ‘Supertest’ formats. World Series Cricket was initially dismissed as a ‘circus’ but an aggressive marketing campaign, night games and attacking stroke-play saw its popularity skyrocket.

In recent times, technology powerhouse YouTube, partnered with the Indian Premier League to live stream the 2010 IPL series via YouTube. While the IPL series was predominantly broadcast via television, the live stream footage reached 50 million views globally across 200 plus countries. The biggest viewer population was unsurprisingly India. However the United States were surprisingly the second largest audience, a country not known to give much attention to cricket. With the advance of technology, the media have also changed how the game is televised, introducing new ways for the viewer to see the game including video replays, Stump Cam, HawkEye, video umpire and also infrared HotSpot to see where the ball hit the bat.The International Cricket Hall of Fame is presently installing a Stump Cam in the Kids Backyard. Check back soon for an update. At any major cricket match today, you’ll find a wide array of media and their production teams broadcasting, interviewing and providing ongoing news and commentary to the cricket masses.

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