The Origin
Cricket is said to have originated in the 16th century among the farmers and metal workers community in the Weald area close to Kent and Sussex in England as a game played by children. It is argued that cricket was a popular game among these children who used to play it in large cattle grazing lands using farm tools as a bat, stones or woolen lumps as balls and tree stumps as wickets before older men took up the sport generations later. The objective of the game was very simple with the player trying to stop the ball from hitting its target.
The name
The first reference to the name of the sport is dated back to 1598 as “creckett”. There are many theories behind the derivation of the name. It is debated to have originated from the Dutch word “krick(-e)” which means a stick or also from an Old English word “crick” or “cryce” which means a staff or a crutch.
First Reference
The earliest written reference to the game is found in a court case dated 1597 regarding a land dispute. The sport is referred to again in 1611, this time as a game adults played, when two men were accused of playing the game on a Sunday instead of going to church. The same year the word also appeared in a dictionary as a game played by boys and had then recently gained popularity in adults.
Early Hurdles - The Civil War & the Commonwealth
The game is also referred to in the English Civil War and there are evidences that it had earned the stature of an adult game. The games were played between parish and church teams and had not yet been played at a county level. At the end of the Civil War in 1648, the commonwealth government discouraged unlawful assemblies which adversely affected sports like football. Though cricket faced less resistance as long as it did not affect the observance of the Sabbath that the commonwealth was very keen on observing, it did affect the popularity as working class were only free during Sabbath.
Downfall of Commonwealth, Restoration and the emergence of Cricket
In 1660, after the Restoration of the monarchy, cricket attracted popularity and gambling. Newspapers started covering cricket from a gambling point of view with references of matches such us the one played in Sussex for bets of 50 guineas a side. However such reports also meant that cricket was closely observed and had started gaining spectatorship.