The vintage cricket

The sport of cricket has a known history, beginning in the 16th century. The game originated in England, among shepherds using their crooks as bats, and the earliest wickets may well have been narrow sheep pens. The earliest men’s games that were officially recorded (from law court records) were played in southeast England in the 1550s. Initially a single wicket was used, as it still is in ancient games like stoolball that continue to be played in southern England.

ORIGIN OF CRICKET

The poet John Skelton describes immigrants from Flanders living in southern England playing creckette. This transformed into Crickett (1598) in a coroner’s account of teenage games in Guildford. All this sounds probable to describe the origin of the word ‘cricket’. The game itself evolved from a variety of folk hitabouts played in villages on both sides of the Channel, each with its own local idiosyncrasies. Confined the early versions of cricket to the forests and Downlands of south east England–in West Sussex and the Weald of Kent.