The Probert Encyclopaedia of Recreation

CRICKET

Cricket is the English national summer game - although the English cricket team of the 1990s is an international joke. The modern day game seems to have evolved around the 16th century from earlier bat and ball games dating from the 13th century and assumed its present form, through evolution, in the 18th century. A picture in a manuscript from 1344 depicts a monk bowling a ball to another monk who is about to strike it with a staff or crutch known as a cric. The earliest mention of the word 'cricket' occurs in 1593 when John Derrick telling how attending the free school in Guildford 'he and his fellowes did run and play there at crickett and other plaies'.

Cricket is a team game played by two teams of 11 players each on a pitch of smooth grass. Two wickets of three stumps each are pitched fronting each other at a distance of about 22 yards apart, the stumps being upright rods stuck in the ground, and projecting 27 inches. On the top of each set of stumps are placed two small pieces of wood called bails. After the rival sides have tossed for the choice of either taking the bat or fielding, two men are sent to the wickets bat in hand. The opposite or fielding side are all simultaneously engaged; one (the bowler) being stationed behind one wicket for the purpose of bowling his ball against the opposite wicket, where his coadjutor (the wicket-keeper) stands ready to catch the ball should it pass near him; the other fielders are placed in such parts of the field as is judged most favourable for stopping the ball after it has been struck by the batsman or missed by the wicket-keeper.

It is the object of the batsman to prevent the ball delivered by the bowler reaching his wicket either by merely stopping it with his bat or by driving it away to a distant part of the field. Should the ball be driven any distance the two batsmen run across and exchange wickets, and continue to do so as long as there is no risk in being 'run out,' that is, of having the stumps struck by the ball while they are out of their position near the wickets. Each time the batsmen run between the wickets is counted as a ' run,' and is marked to the credit of the striker of the ball. If the batsman allows the ball to carry away a bail or a stump, if he knocks down any part of his own wicket, if any part of his person stops a ball that would have otherwise reached his wicket, or if he strikes a ball so that it is caught by one of the opposite party before it reaches the ground, he is 'out,' that is, he gives up his bat to one of his own side; and so the game goes on until all the men on one side have played and been put out. This constitutes what is called an 'innings.' The other side now take the bat and try to defend their wickets and make runs as their rivals did. Generally after two innings each have been played by the contestants the game comes to an end, that side being the victors who can score the greatest number of runs.
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