Historical Development of Cricket as a Game in India:
Cricket derived its unique nature from the history of England.
Peculiarities of cricket:
A cricket match could go on for five days and still end in a draw.
Length of the pitch was specified as 22 yards but the size or shape of the ground is not.
The rules of Cricket were made before the Industrial Revolution when life moved at a slow pace.
It was played on the commons where each one had a different shape and size thus there were no designed boundaries.
The First Written Laws of Cricket (1744):
The Principals shall choose from among the gentlemen present, two umpires, who shall decide all disputes.
Stumps were to be 22 inches high and the bails, six inches.
Two sets of stumps were to be placed 22 yards apart.
Ball must weigh between 5 to 6 ounces.
The world’s first cricket club was formed in Hambledon in 1760s.
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was founded in 1787.
In 1788, the MCC published its first revision of the laws and became the guardian of cricket’s regulations.
A series of changes in the game occurred in the 2nd half of the 18th century.
19th century saw some more changes.
The Game and English Society:
The players of this game were divided into two categories.
Amateurs were the rich who played for pleasure.
Players were the professionals who played for money.
Rules of cricket were made to favour the gentlemen.
Their superiority over players made only the batsmen captains of teams.
The Spread of Cricket
It was its colonial oddness that made cricket difficult to be accepted by other people.
It was played in colonies by the white settlers or the local elites who wanted to copy their white masters.
In the Caribbean, cricket was a sign of social and racial status and Afro-Caribbean population was discouraged from playing cricket.
Whites initially dominated the game until 1960 when Frank Worell, a black player lead the West Indies team.
Cricket, Race and Religion:
The first Indian community to play cricket were the Parsis.
They founded the first Indian Cricket Club, the Oriental Cricket Club in Bombay in 1848.
By the 1890s a Hindu Gymkhana and an Islam Gymkhana were established.
The Quadrangular tournament was played by 4 teams namely, Europeans, Parsis, Hindus and Muslims.
Later, it became the Pentangular tournament, when a fifth team namely ‘the Rest’ was added.
Cricket became a symbol of unity when the Hindu team appointed Mr. Vitthal, a player from lower class as captain.
The Modern Transformation of Cricket
In 1932 India started playing as an international team with C.K. Nayudu with its maiden captain.
But with emergence of Asian powers in 1970s, the influence of England and Australia declined.
ICC initially called Imperial Cricket Conference was later renamed as International Cricket Conference.
Commerce, Media and Cricket Today
The 1970s saw a major transformation in cricket.
In 1977 an Australian television tycoon, Kerry Packer, saw cricket as a money-making televised sport.
He signed up 51 of the world’s leading cricketers and for almost two years staged unofficial tests and One-day Internationals under the name of World Series Cricket.
Continuous television coverage made cricketers celebrities.
Television coverage also expanded the audience and children became cricket fans.
Multinational companies created a global market for cricket.
India has the largest viewership for the game and hence the game’s centre of gravity shifted to South Asia.
This shift was symbolised by the shifting of the ICC headquarters from London to tax-free Dubai.
