Cricket is a bat-and-ball sport that is played between two teams of eleven players on a field that has a wicket at each end made up of two bails balanced on three stumps. The pitch measures 22 yards (20 meters) in length. The bowling and fielding side tries to stop this (by preventing the ball from leaving the field and getting it to either wicket) and dismiss each batter (so they are "out"). The batting side scores a run by striking the ball bowled at one of the wickets with the bat and then running between the wickets. Being bowled, having the ball strike the stumps and knock the bails off, and having the fielding side either catch the ball after it is struck are always to be dismissed.
History
Origins of cricket in historical perspective
Article focus: Cricket history up to 1725
A "club ball" game played in medieval times in which the batter is bowled at underhanded. There are images of people setting up to catch a ball. Detail from the 13th-century Holy Mary Canticles.
Baseball, which has many similarities to cricket and both of which fall under the more specific category of bat-and-ball games[2], is one of many "club ball" games that essentially involve hitting a ball with a hand-held implement. Other games in this category include golf, hockey, tennis, squash, badminton, and table tennis.[3] The wicket, which the batter must defend, is a solid target structure in cricket. It is believed that the wicket was originally a "wicket gate" through which sheep were herded.[4]
Harry Alt ham, a cricket historian, classified "club ball" games into three "groups": "hockey group," in which the ball is driven to and from between two targets (the goals); "golf group," in which the ball is driven toward an open target (the hole); and "cricket group," in which "the ball is aimed at a mark (the wicket) and driven away from it."[5]
Cricket is usually accepted to have started as a kid's game in the south-eastern counties of England at some point during the Middle Ages.[4] Despite assertions to the contrary, the oldest conclusive evidence of cricket play dates back to a court case in Guildford in January 1597 (Old Style, which corresponds to January 1598 in the contemporary calendar).
Given Derrick's age, it was roughly 500 years ago while he was in school, therefore it seems certain that boys in Surrey were playing cricket around the year 1550.[8] The 1611 English-French dictionary by Randle Cot grave, which defined the noun "cross" as "the crooked staff wherewith boys play at cricket" and the verb form "crosser" as "to play at cricket," supports the idea that it was first a kid's game.[9][10]
The Old English word "care" (or "crick"), which means a crutch or staff, is one potential origin for the sport's name. Cricket was created by Samuel Johnson from the words "care, Saxon, a stick" in his dictionary.[6] The word "croquet" appears to have denoted a type of club or stick in Old French.[11] Given the powerful.
The name may have come from the Middle Dutch word "crick"(-e), which means a stick (crook), which was in use in the County of Flanders at the time and was in use there during the Middle Ages when the latter belonged to the Duchy of Burgundy.[11] The Middle Dutch word "trickster," which refers to a long, low stool used for kneeling in church and resembles the long, low wicket with two stumps used in early cricket, is another potential source.[12] Heiner Ringmaster, a European linguist at Bonn University, claims that the word "cricket" is derived from the Middle Dutch expression "with the stick chase" for hockey.[13] Ringmaster has hypothesized that the sport's name and possibly even its origins may be Flemish.
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