A Look Back at Early Cricket

Several readers of my "Cricket in America" series have called or written to ask what is known of early Cricket, meaning where the sport came from, and how it was played in the years before the 1789 Laws of Cricket gave the sport its modern form.

A likely possibility is that the earliest forms of cricket originated in India, and were passed to England through Persia and Europe. Ancient texts record several games, one of which (called guli-dunda, or ball-and-bat) is still played in Pakistani and Indian villages in its original form, guli-danda (which became kuitskaukan in old Persia, there being called a "forme of crickett" by John Davies in Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors,1632) involved a 'batsman and fielders, and a hole in the ground for a base, but no bowler (or pitcher); the batsman struck the ball, aimed for distance, could be caught out, or score points.

If an archaic form of guli-danda or kuitskaukan is the remote ancestor of cricket, it would have traveled to Europe the same way that the ancient Indian board game, chaturanga, turned into shutrunj in Persia, and became chess in Europe. But guli-danda's character worked against its adoption by Europe's tribal aristocracies who had taken to chess as their proxy for one-on-one combat. Instead, by the 7th century, it was monks such as Eustarius Cartonius of Florence who were playing and describing a sport uncannily similar to guli-danda but with two important differences. Now someone serves up the ball to be hit, and the hole in the ground is sometimes marked with a stake or stump, a practice which persists in golf. The Bowler and the wicket have made their appearances.

The ecclesiastical connection might seem puzzling; there is an explanation. In those early centuries, there were no "common lands", let alone public parks, Monastery estates, however, were usually left alone by predatory warlords because of the symbolic authority of the Church. If "ball-and-bat" was a popular community activity requiring the use of open space, it could easily have been one of the recreations that a monastery might sponsor without hindrance from the local chieftains.

In this form, "ball-and-bat" must have been a weekend folk sport in Europe linked to Church-based ideas on days of rest and recreation. It seems to have been adopted by the Saxons in England by the 9th century, along with the Holy Gospel.

The coming of the Normans to England in the 11th century marked a decisive shift. The newly feudal aristocracy had been cultivating liesurely field sports. Within a surprisingly short time, they entered into a marriage of convenience with the ball-bat sport of their serfs, the Saxons. This hybrid activity, which probably named itself after the old French word, criquet, for the center stake in ancient lawn bowling, combined Saxon vigor with the studied elegance of the Norman tradition. Long before English replaced French as the official language of the realm, the first quintessentially English sport had synthesized out of earlier non-English traditions.

From this time onwards, tantalizing but definite references to cricket begin to appear in many publications and records. A long poem by Joseph of Exeter in 1180 eulogizes cricket, and gives a detailed description of the game in 1300. King Edward II's household accounts show payment for a creagh, or a cricket bat. Geoffrey Chaucer, writing in his Canterbury Tales in the late1300s, mentions cricket several times. It is clear that cricket has become ubiquitous by its presence between the 11th and 14th centuries even though references to it are excruciatingly fragmentary.

Any attempt to describe cricket before the 11th century would be mostly speculation. It appears that monks and abbots participated along with lay folk, and women may also have played, judging by a surviving illustration. Since women are known to have played cricket between the 17th and 19th centuries, it is not a surprise to find that tradition extend back to earliest times.

Several different kinds of pre-10th century bats are known to have been used, including some that look very much like modern baseball bats. A single stump, to mark the hole around which the game was traditionally played, could have been in use, rather like early golf. We know practically nothing of early cricket balls, nor of playing or scoring rules, although analogies with related bat-and-ball games suggest that fielding, catching and running were involved.

By the 11th and 12th centuries, we are on firmer ground.

Bats were still rudimentary, although sturdy, the hockey-stick like bats of the 16th and 17th centuries had yet to make an appearance. By now, there definitely WERE wickets, two-sticks, placed a foot or two apart, with sturdy pole balanced on the top. The bowlers evidently aimed to knock the pole off.

While the knights hit, bowled and fielded in front of the "wickets", the mostly Saxon serfs seem to have been stationed behind them; to this day, names of many fielding positions behind the wickets (gully, slip, third man) betray their Saxon farm origins. There could have been several bases for the batsman 6to run to or around; even as late as late as the 17th century, there was a three-base variation of the game which is still played at Cambridge University.

The most interesting thing about 12th century cricket, however, is the enthusiasm with which it is described by contemporaries. Cricket is a "merry" recreation, says Joseph of Exeter, at which young men all participate in what appears to be an uproarious festival of the spirit with no thought of social differences, status or other formalities.

It is in this, more than the technical details, that we may discern the sprit of the earliest cricket from which our modern sport is descended. The rules might change as the sport grows more precise and formal. But the sprit of laughter and fun that marked those early days had better remain enshrined in cricket's soul, or something of priceless value will have been lost.

After its beginnings as a bat-and-ball sport in Europe in the 8^th century, and its establishment as a bona fide English game from the 11^th to 14^th centuries, cricket began a period of decline, it was banned in England, and cricketers were unmercifully persecuted. Not until the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries do we again hear of cricket being described in contemporary narratives.

The reason for the eclipse that lasted nearly three centuries was that from 13^th to the 15^th centuries, the major open-field recreations of the English was not cricket but archery. The famed skill of the English longbowmen, demonstrated to devastating effect at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, had been honed by weekends of practice on English greens. This did not come easily, recalcitrant yeomen were required to maintain their equipment and attend practice to keep their standards high. Archery had also become a meeting ground for Norman and Saxon, as illustrated in the story of Robin Hood, and cricket was no longer needed to perform the community function.

The Plantagenet kings of the 14th and 15th centuries were especially conscious of the importance of the longbow, and disapproved of all games that interfered with the practice of archery. In 1447-48, Edward IV issued a particularly severe edict by which it was proposed to imprison for three years anyone who allowed cricket to be played on his premises and to fine him 20 pounds (worth perhaps $5000 today). Players would be subject to a fine of 1O pounds, and their equipment was to be burnt. Whether this was enforced as strictly as it sounded is a matter of conjecture, certainly there are few records of cricket trials in the 15^th century. But the message must have been unmistakable. The 15^th century cricketer was to be considered an outlaw, and treated as a criminal.

The revival of cricket in the 16^th and early 17^th centuries, therefore, may owe as much to gunpowder as to the English spirit. After the arquebeus, the musket and the cannon finally put an end to the longbowman, the cricketer was able to emerge from the shadows. The village greens, now empty of archery targets, were once more open to "frolick". And the cricketers were happy to perform.

For obvious reasons, little was written about cricket in the 14^th and the 15^th centuries. It is also likely that the earlier documentation was destroyed during the period, and the fragments that survive from the 9^th to the 13^th centuries are items that escaped the relentless censors. Only in the 16^th century do we hear about cricket again, and then not in especially edifying terms.

The Church, it seems, had done an about-face on cricket by the 16^th century. Where 9^th century monks had sponsored the earliest forms of the sport, 16^th century ministers equaled cricket with "disreputable" outdoor activities such as "innorrie dancing" and cudgel-playing". They did pay cricket an unintended compliment, even after three hundred years of exile, cricket had evidently not lost the "merrye" character first described by Joseph of Exeter in 1180. But the 16^th century English Church may have been too preoccupied with the erosion of its immunity from the forces that were to lead to Reformation to care about endorsing "frivolous" activities like cricket.

The emerging Puritans went one better, and lined up against frivolity as a matter of principle. Cricket was an early target of this fundamental tirade.

This may be the reason why there are very few descriptions of cricket being played in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, although there are references to the sport itself. We do have tirades on time "wasted" y individuals playing cricket, of families "doomed" by cricketers’ lifestyles, and of "profligacies" associated with the sport. The frequency of these reports in the 16^th and early 17^th centuries suggests that cricket must be growing in popularity, much to the horror of Church Father and other "respectable" folk.

Cricket was, however, changing in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Witness the matter of "stumps", or "wickets".

The single wicket of the 10^th century, where it had been used, had been 18 inches high. 15^th and 16^th century cricket was definitely played with two stumps. In the 15^th century the two stumps were high and wide, with a piece of wood between them; In the 16^th century, they were taller and thinner. Between them there was a hole into which a fielder had to "pop" the ball to get the runner out, while the batsman had to push his bat into the hole ahead of the fielder to be safe. The term "popping crease" dates from these times.

The bat, by this time, was definitely crooked, like an oversized hockey stick. Its shape suggests that the ball would have had to be delivered low, and shots would be executed primarily off the ground.

There is something else that is new in 16^th century cricket.

As far as we can tell, there was no organized gambling in cricket before the 14thcentury. However, during its centuries of existing as a sub rosa activity, cricket could only be played under the threat of fines or imprisonment, so only those willing to gamble could risk playing it. Matches began to be arranged between players willing to put up cash for winning or losing, making target scores, or taking specific number of wickets. The "hat trick", where a hat was passe among spectators for bowlers who had dismissed three batsman in successive pitches, dates from these times. As bystanders joined in the fun, audiences congregated around money to be won or lost in matches, "teams" developed around consistent winners, and clerics and public officials alike resigned themselves to putting up with this nefarious pastime.

It was not until 18^th century that the voices of censure was finally stilled, and cricket again became "respectable". This is when the sport entered its modern era, and became more like what it is today.