WHAT'S NEW?
Loading...
History of cricket
First Grand Match of Cricket Played by Members of the Royal Amateur Society on Hampton Court Green
The game of cricket has a known history beginning in the late 16th century. Having originated in south-east England, it became the country's national sport in the 18th century and has developed globally in the 19th and 20th centuries. International matches have been played since 1844, although international Test cricket began, retrospectively recognised, in 1877. Cricket is the world's second most popular spectator sport after association football. Governance is by the International Cricket Council (ICC) which has over one hundred members although only ten play Test cricket.
Early cricket
Main article: History of cricket to 1725
Origin
The origin of cricket is unknown. There is a consensus of expert opinion that it was probably created during Saxon orNorman times by children living in theWeald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England that lies across Kent and Sussex.[1] The first definite reference is dated Monday, 17 January 1597 (Julian date; see below).
There have been several speculations about the game's origins including some that it was created in France or Flanders. The earliest of these speculative references is dated Thursday, 10 March 1300 (Julian date) and concerns the future King Edward IIplaying at "creag and other games" in both Westminster and Newenden. It has been suggested that "creag" was anOlde English word for cricket but expert opinion is that it was an early spelling of "craic", meaning "fun and games in general".[2]
It is generally believed that cricket survived as a children's game for many generations before it was increasingly taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th century. Possibly cricket was derived from bowls, assuming bowls is the older sport, by the intervention of a batsman trying to stop the ball from reaching its target by hitting it away. Playing on sheep-grazed land or in clearings, the original implements may have been a matted lump of sheep’s wool (or even a stone or a small lump of wood) as the ball; a stick or a crook or another farm tool as the bat; and a stool or a tree stump or a gate (e.g., a wicket gate) as the wicket.[3]
First definite reference
John Derrick was a pupil at the Royal Grammar School, then the Free School, in Guildford when he and his friends playedcreckett circa 1550
A 1597 court case in England concerning an ownership dispute over a plot of common land in Guildford, Surreymentions the game of creckett. A 59-year-old coroner, John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played creckett on the site fifty years earlier when they attended the Free School. Derrick's account proves beyond reasonable doubt that the game was being played in Surrey circa 1550, and is the earliest universally accepted reference to the game.[4][5]
The first reference to cricket being played as an adult sport was in 1611, when two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church.[6] In the same year, a dictionary defined cricket as a boys' game and this suggests that adult participation was a recent development.[4]
Derivation of the name of "cricket"
A number of words are thought to be possible sources for the term "cricket". In the earliest definite reference, it was spelled creckett. The name may have been derived from the Middle Dutchkrick(-e), meaning a stick; or the Old English cricc or cryce meaning a crutch or staff, or the French word criquetmeaning a wooden post.[3] The Middle Dutch word krickstoel means a long low stool used for kneeling in church; this resembled the long low wicket with twostumps used in early cricket.[7]According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of theUniversity of Bonn, "cricket" derives from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockey, met de (krik ket)sen (i.e., "with the stick chase").[8]
It is more likely that the terminology of cricket was based on words in use in south-east England at the time and, given trade connections with the County of Flanders, especially in the 15th century when it belonged to the Duchy of Burgundy, many Middle Dutch[9]words found their way into southern English dialects.[10]
Early 17th century
A number of references occur up to theEnglish Civil War and these indicate that cricket had become an adult game contested by parish teams, but there is no evidence of county strength teams at this time. Equally, there is little evidence of the rampant gambling that characterised the game throughout the 18th century. It is generally believed, therefore, that village cricket had developed by the middle of the 17th century but that county cricket had not and that investment in the game had not begun.[11]
The Commonwealth
After the Civil War ended in 1648, the new Puritan government clamped down on "unlawful assemblies", in particular the more raucous sports such as football. Their laws also demanded a stricter observance of the Sabbath than there had been previously. As the Sabbath was the only free time available to the lower classes, cricket's popularity may have waned during theCommonwealth. However, it did flourish in public fee-paying schools such asWinchester and St Paul's. There is no actual evidence that Oliver Cromwell's regime banned cricket specifically and there are references to it during theinterregnum that suggest it was acceptable to the authorities provided that it did not cause any "breach of the Sabbath".[11] It is believed that the nobility in general adopted cricket at this time through involvement in village games.[4]
Gambling and press coverage
Cricket certainly thrived after theRestoration in 1660 and is believed to have first attracted gamblers making large bets at this time. In 1664, the "Cavalier" Parliament passed the Gaming Act 1664 which limited stakes to £100, although that was still a fortune at the time,[11] equivalent to about £14 thousand in present-day terms [12]. Cricket had certainly become a significant gambling sport by the end of the 17th century. There is a newspaper report of a "great match" played in Sussex in 1697 which was 11-a-side and played for high stakes of 50 guineas a side.[6]
With freedom of the press having been granted in 1696, cricket for the first time could be reported in the newspapers. But it was a long time before the newspaper industry adapted sufficiently to provide frequent, let alone comprehensive, coverage of the game. During the first half of the 18th century, press reports tended to focus on the betting rather than on the play.
pronunciation ; born 5 November 1988) is an Indian international cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and occasional right-arm medium pace bowler. He is the current captain of the Indian team inTest cricket and vice-captain in limited overs formats. In the Indian Premier League (IPL), he captains the Royal Challengers Bangalore.
After representing Delhi at various age-group levels and domestic cricket, Kohli captained India Under-19s to victory at the 2008 Under-19 World Cup in Malaysia. A few months later, Kohli made his ODI debut for India against Sri Lanka at the age of 19 years on 18 August 2008.[2] Initially having played as a reserve batsman in the Indian team, he soon established himself as a regular in the middle-order in ODIs. He was part of the Indian squad that won the 2011 World Cup. Kohli played his first Test in 2011 against the West Indies at Kingston. By 2013, he shrugged off the tag of "ODI specialist" with Test hundreds in Australia and South Africa.[3] The same year, he also reached the number one spot in the ICC rankingsfor ODI batsmen for the first time.[4] He has also found success in the Twenty20format, winning the Man of the Tournament at the 2014 ICC World Twenty20 in Bangladesh. Later that year, he became the top-ranked T20I batsman in the ICC rankings.[5]
Kohli was appointed the vice-captain of the ODI team in 2012 and has since also captained the team on several occasions in the absence of regular skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni. After Dhoni's Test retirement in 2014, Kohli was handed over the Test captaincy. Kohli holds numerous Indian batting records including the fastest ODI century, the fastest batsman to 5,000 ODI runs and the fastest to 10 ODI centuries. He is only the second batsman in the world to have scored 1,000 or more ODI runs for four consecutive calendar years.[6] In 2015, he became the fastest batsman in the world to 1,000 runs in T20Is.
Kohli has been the recipient of many awards such as the ICC ODI Player of the Year in 2012 and the BCCI's international cricketer of the year for the 2011–12 and 2014–15 seasons. In 2013, he was given the Arjuna Award in recognition of his achievements in international cricket.[7] SportsPro, a UK magazine, rated Kohli as the second most marketable athlete in the world in 2014.[8] He is also a co-owner of the ISLteam FC Goa and the IPTL franchiseUAE Royals.
Early life
Virat Kohli was born on 5 November 1988 in Delhi in a Punjabi family.[9][10]His father, Prem Kohli, worked as a criminal lawyer and his mother, Saroj Kohli, is a housewife.[11] He has an elder brother, Vikash, and an elder sister, Bhavna.[12] According to his family, when he was three-years old, Kohli would pick up a cricket bat, start swinging it and ask his father to bowl at him.[13]
Kohli was raised in Uttam Nagar[14] and started his schooling at Vishal Bharti Public School. In 1998, the West Delhi Cricket Academy was created, and Kohli, a nine-year-old, was part of its first intake.[14] Kohli's father took him to the academy after their neighbors suggested that "Virat shouldn't waste his time in gully cricket and instead join a professional club".[11] Kohli trained at the academy under Rajkumar Sharmaand also played matches at the Sumit Dogra Academy near Noida at the same time.[14] In ninth grade, he shifted to Savier Convent in Paschim Vihar to help his cricket practice.[11] Apart from sports, Kohli was good at academics as well, and his teachers remember him as "a bright and alert child".[15]
Kohli's father died on 18 December 2006 due to brain stroke after being bed-ridden for a month.[11] Regarding his early life, Kohli has said in an interview, "I've seen a lot in life. Losing my father at a young age, the family business not doing too well, staying in a rented place. There were tough times for the family... It's all embedded in my memory."[16]According to Kohli, his father supported his cricket training during his childhood, "My father was my biggest support. He was the one who drove me to practice everyday. I miss his presence sometimes."[17]