Unlikely that we shall ever know.....
In the opening paragraph of his Phoenix History of Cricket, Roy Webber says:
"The origins of the game have been lost in the mists of time and it is unlikely that we shall ever know much more about early cricket than we do today (my italics). Several cricket lovers have spent years in libraries all over the country in an attempt to collect more data, but their work is restricted to the amount of matter available for research. And this is the real core of the problem: few newspapers of the 17th century are available and in those which exist little space is devoted to cricket. Apart from a few items, therefore, we are completely in the dark over the early years of cricket history, and can only deduce the story (my italics) of the spread of cricket from the sparse evidence available".
Webber wrote that in 1960 which, hard to believe, is well over half a century ago. Yet he could have written it yesterday for, apart from a few small finds here and a number of corrections there, we do indeed know little more today than he did in 1960. Now, as then, more than 95% of what we know about cricket before the 19th century is to be found in the works of Harry Altham, F. S. Ashley-Cooper, Samuel Britcher, G. B. Buckley, Arthur Haygarth, John Nyren, James Pycroft, H. T. Waghorn and a few others. There have been some good contributors since Webber's day but the best we can get from them is a new angle, another approach or a fresh theory. The original research has been done and all that is left is to "deduce the story" by analysing "the sparse evidence available".
Club-ball
Several sources are in agreement that cricket evolved from a generic activity which they have named "club-ball". Desmond Eagar, the former Hampshire captain, wrote the first three chapters of Barclays World of Cricket and mentioned the 18th century writer, Joseph Strutt, who was the first to declare cricket to be a descendant of club-ball. John Nyren in 1833 agreed with Strutt. In 1851, James Pycroft went further by saying that club-ball was the name by which cricket was known in the 13th century but that, of course, is erroneous speculation of the worst possible kind. A few years later, Arthur Haygarth wrote that cricket has "so close an affinity to the primitive and indigenous game of club-ball as to be a direct off-shoot".
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Felix on the Bat (1845). Nicholas Felix held a dismissive view of club-ball. |
Harry Altham wrote that "most of all did our own forefathers enjoy hitting a ball with that which it was second nature for them to carry, a staff or club, be it straight or crooked". He saw that routine activity as the "parent tree" of club-ball which split into three distinct groupings: the hockey group in which the ball is driven to and fro between two goals; the golf group in which the ball is driven towards a specific target; and the cricket group in which the ball is aimed at a target and then driven away from it. Therefore, although there is no definite link between them, the cricket group must include baseball and rounders as well as cricket itself.
Interestingly, Altham seems to have forgotten the tennis group, unless he thought tennis involves "goals", and so is akin to hockey. Well, it isn't, so there are four groups which involve hitting a ball with some kind of bat, club, racquet or stick. John Major begins his account by saying that cricket at its most basic is a club striking a ball and the same, he says, is true of golf, rounders, baseball, hockey and tennis. Major goes on to demolish Pycroft's nonsense, and quotes Nicholas Felix, who asserted that club-ball was a very ancient game, totally distinct from cricket.
Any form of ball-bashing
As for what club-ball was, no one actually knows. Derek Birley asks if it ever was a specific game? He doubts that, and thinks the term was, after all, generic. As he puts it, "a catch-all term to cover any form of ball-bashing the citizenry were apt to waste their time on".
David Underdown, who was Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University, deliberately side-steps the debates about cricket's prehistory and dismisses them as speculation. He doesn't mention club-ball at all except to concede that, yes, young people probably did always play whatever forms of the numerous bat-and-ball games were popular in their localities. The only one of the theories he supports is the where as he believed cricket to have originated in south-east England. He states with good reason that, before the legal deposition made by John Derrick in 1597, there is nothing any historian can usefully say about cricket.
So, from all of that, when did cricket's history begin? As we have just seen, numerous theories have been put forward about the sport's supposed origin and most of them, as per Underdown, can be dismissed as not worth mentioning. I accept the general view that cricket began in the south-east and evolved as a specific activity from a more generic club-and-ball one. Although it is surely another red herring, let's consider an activity called creag in the year 1300.
Longshanks and creag
On Thursday, 10 March 1300 (a Julian date which is 18 March 1300 in the Gregorian calendar), royal wardrobe accounts of Edward I (1239–1307; known as "Longshanks") include refunds to one John de Leek of monies that he had paid out to enable Prince Edward to play "creag and other games" at both Westminster and Newenden. Prince Edward, the future Prince of Wales who became Edward II (1284–1327), was then aged 15. He supposedly ended his life by acquaintance with a red-hot poker which inspired the term "go medieval" in Pulp Fiction.
This word creag is probably a variation of craic, a Gaelic word which was part of Middle English, and means "fun and games in general". Nevertheless, it has been suggested that creag was an early form of cricket. There is no evidence to support this view, and creag could have been something quite different as per craic, but it does at least seem a likely suspect, especially when the Kent location is considered.
The Weald
The most widely accepted theory on the origin of cricket is that it developed among the farming and metalworking communities of the Weald, which spreads across the counties of Kent and Sussex. The Weald is generally held to have been the cradle of cricket and one writer, Peter Wynne-Thomas, even says so in a book's title.
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The Weald. Is this where cricket began? Looks like they've got the weather for it. |
John Arlott, long regarded as the doyen of cricket writers and broadcasters, firmly believed that the Weald was the key location.
It is significant that these counties, and neighbouring Surrey, were the earliest centres of excellence, and that it was from here that the game eventually reached London, where it achieved mass popularity, and Hampshire, where it achieved both fame and legend.
There is, however, an alternative view that the sport originated in Flanders, and was brought to southern England by immigrant weavers. I think cricket was devised by children, and survived for many generations as essentially a children's game. As for when, I'd guess in Norman or Plantagenet times anytime before 1300. As for the name, it has no connection with the insect. It must have been derived from words that were in use, and possibly imported. In old French, the word criquet seems to have meant a kind of club or stick. There were strong Flemish connections with early cricket, as will be explained, and in Middle Dutch, the language of medieval Flanders, krick(e) meant a stick; in Olde English, cricc or cryce meant a crutch or staff. In the earliest known definite reference to the sport in 1597, it is called creckett. According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of the University of Bonn, "cricket" derives from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockey, met de krik ketsen (i.e., "with the stick chase"). Gillmeister believes the sport itself had a Flemish origin, but the jury is still out on that one.
The three centuries from creag to creckett contain speculation only. Harry Altham called the period "archaeological", and Rowland Bowen called it "prehistoric".
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| Bourne Park, near Bishopsbourne in Kent. |
Bowen is much nearer the mark because I'm aware of only one connection between archaeology and cricket. That has been at Bourne Park (above) in Kent, where Horatio Mann had his Bishopsbourne Paddock ground in the 1770s. A team from the University of Cambridge spent some years digging there, and found Bronze Age and Roman artefacts, but no missing bats or stumps.
The French Connection
In 1337, King Edward III (1312–1377) claimed the throne of France. This began a long series of conflicts—collectively known as the Hundred Years War—which did not end until the English were finally expelled from most of France (except Calais) in 1453. Certain references have been found which some writers have interpreted as a "French Connection" in the origins of cricket, but they have missed a key historical point.
As the Hundred Years War progressed, large parts of France including great cities like Paris and Bordeaux were subject to long-term English occupation. Paris, when François Villon was born there in 1431, was described as "an English town". Calais remained an English possession until 1558, a whole century after the end of the Hundred Years War. So, there may well be cricket references in France but they do not indicate a movement of the sport from France to England; they indicate that English soldiers and settlers brought their culture across the Channel with them during the long period of occupation.
Cricket is the quintessential English game, and it has followed the English everywhere. If the English had colonised Mars, the Martians would now be members of the ICC!
Burgundy
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Louis XI of France. The "Universal Spider". |
The death of Duke Charles (the Bold) in 1477 enabled French King Louis XI, the notorious "Universal Spider", to redraw the map of Europe. Charles was succeeded by his daughter Marie (1457–1482) as Duchess of Burgundy, and she married the Austrian Habsburg archduke Maximilian (1459–1519) who later (in 1493) became Holy Roman Emperor. Louis XI took advantage of the confused situation following Charles' death to seize Burgundy itself, and its territory in Artois and Picardy. A revolt in the Netherlands was suppressed by Maximilian. The remaining Burgundian lands in Franche-Comte, Luxembourg, Flanders, Belgium, and the Dutch Netherlands became Habsburg territory.
The suppression of Flanders and the Netherlands under the dead hand of Habsburg autocracy caused many Flemish and Dutch traders to migrate to England, where they seem to have had an impact on the development of cricket. Unfortunately for the development of the game in their own lands, it is reasonable to assume it could not thrive under Habsburg rule.
With the Flemish came their language and perhaps their sport. No evidence has been found of cricket being played in Flanders, but they did play the hockey game mentioned above which is the basis of Gillmeister's theory. The cloth-working fringe area of the Weald was poorly populated in the 15th century. Villages were small but Flemish migration increased their populations, particularly in the middle years of the 16th century. The Flemings were certainly active in the cloth trade in all the areas where cricket was played in the 17th century. It has been surmised that the Flemings moulded the traditional game of stoolball into something we would recognise as cricket, but the evidence indicates it was a children's game until the end of the 16th century, though there can be little doubt that Flemish children did play it.
Bowls or bowling?
In 1588, using the execution of Mary I, Queen of Scots as a pretext, the militant King Philip II of Spain launched his Armada against Elizabethan England. The Armada was famously defeated by a combination of the English weather and the English fleet, the latter commanded by John Hawkins, Charles Howard and Francis Drake.
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| Plymouth Hoe |
Everyone knows the legend of Drake finishing his game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe as the Armada hove into view. But, was he really playing bowls, or was he perhaps bowling? We shall never know.....
Guildford and the Coroner
And so we come to Monday, 17 January 1597 (Julian calendar), when a Guildford law court met to settle dispute over a certain plot of land. Evidence presented confirms that "creckett" was played there by schoolboys around 1550, and this is the earliest definite reference to cricket being played anywhere in the world. The crucial testimony was given by John Derrick, who was born in about 1538. Details of his death are unknown. He was Queen's Coroner for the County of Surrey. (Three hundred years later, Dr E. M. Grace was also a coroner, and was even nicknamed "The Coroner".)
To further the theory of a "Flemish Connection" in the history of cricket, John Eddowes in his The Language of Cricket (1997) points out that John Derrick's surname was derived from the Flemish name Hendrik. Derrick is cricket's first significant figure because he is the person who gives us our historical startpoint. Without him, we would know that something called "cricket-a-wicket" existed in 1598 because it is mentioned in a dictionary, but seems to be about another sort of activity that involves the "thrumming of wenches".
We would then know that a match of sorts took place at Chevening in Kent sometime around the year 1610 and, from a 1611 dictionary, that the French word crosse is "the crooked staffe wherewith boys play at cricket". Nothing, not one thing, to confirm beyond reasonable doubt that cricket was being played in the 16th century. All we could definitely say without John Derrick is that cricket was a seventeenth century game.
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| The Royal Grammar School in Guildford |
The court case was brought by Guildford's Royal Grammar School, founded in 1509. It claimed ownership of a parcel of land in the Parish of Holy Trinity which, originally waste, had been appropriated and enclosed by one John Parvish to serve as a timber yard. Derrick testified that he and his boyhood friends had played "creckett" on the site fifty years earlier. His deposition is preserved in the Guildford Constitution Book. He bore written testimony that he had known the land for fifty years past and, when:
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a scholler of the Ffree Schoole of Guildeford, hee and diverse of his fellowes did runne and play there at creckett and other plaies |
This is the first definite mention of cricket in historical records, although some of the speculation about earlier points of origin may be plausible.
There are some people who insist the game was invented by the Guildford children, because there is no proof that it existed before they started playing it. There really isn't much point in going down that road. The reality is that, whatever may have gone unrecorded before 1597, we have a historical startpoint.
It is perhaps significant that cricket is the only one of the "plaies" referred to by name. It is more significant that it was being played by children because the 1611 dictionary clearly says about the "crooked staffe" that it is what boys use to play cricket "wherewith". As it happens, the earliest known adult participation is hot on the heels of the dictionary via an ecclesiastical court case in Sussex soon after Easter of the same year.
Giovanni Florio
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| Not cricket? Well, yes, it is, actually. |
Harry Altham and others have recorded the probable reference to cricket in an Italian-English dictionary published in 1598 by Giovanni Florio (1553–1625), who defined the word sgillare as: "to make a noise as a cricket, to play cricket-a-wicket, and be merry". Some people think the reference is spurious and relates only to the neek! neek! neek! insect variety of cricket but "to play cricket-a-wicket" hardly suggests insect activity. Given the reference to cricket as a boys' game in another dictionary only 13 years later, it would seem that Florio does have both an insect and a game in mind.
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| Give a little whistle! |
The world's most famous cricket (not the game) has to be Jiminy, self-appointed conscience of Johnson Pinocchio, whose nose grows when he lies. Although Jiminy was a character in Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel, he was the "Cricket With No Name", and he was named Jiminy by Walt Disney for the 1940 film.
India
Wednesday, 31 December 1600. This was the last day of the 16th century in Scotland, but not in England or Wales where New Year's Day was 25 March until 1752, when the Gregorian Calendar was introduced. It was on 31 December 1600 that Queen Elizabeth I granted a Royal Charter to the Honourable East India Company.
Often known colloquially as "John Company", it was initially a joint-stock company that sought trading privileges in India and the East Indies, but the Royal Charter effectively gave it a 21-year monopoly on all trade in the region. In time, the East India Company transformed from a commercial trading venture to one which virtually ruled India as it acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions, until its dissolution in 1858 following the Indian Mutiny.
The East India Company was the means by which cricket was introduced into India and, hence, into Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.
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