Origins of cricket

General

This subject has been the object of a great deal of study, directed either towards ancient games that may be the predecessor of cricket or towards the etymology of the word cricket. My view is that neither of these approaches has yielded very much.

There are certainly vaguely similar English games, but which one evolved into cricket, if indeed one did, is only guesswork. Similarly, the etymological route is so uncertain as to border on futile – words can arise in innumerable ways, and to try to reproduce the process is an uncertain task.

Underlying these is the assumption that cricket evolved, that is to say, it started as a simple stick and ball game and gradually became more complex, maybe over hundreds of year. Mitigating against that is any sign or record of such a process at work. I would therefore like to offer at least the possibility of a ‘big-bang’ theory – that it was specifically inverted by an individual lost to history, maybe a schoolmaster trying to do something for his pupils in the newly formed free grammar schools of the mid-Sixteenth Century. An unprovable hypothesis, but one I will return to. Meanwhile, something about the other aspects of this debate.

Possible predecessors of cricket

Published in 1801, The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England is the major source book for early English games. Essentially, this divides ball games into three families – Foot-Ball, Club-Ball and Hand-Ball, obviously depending on how the ball is struck. Football need not concern us, but the other two are relevant

Club-Ball games

Included in this category are golf, hockey, bandy-ball (a variation of hockey) and tennis (now known as real tennis). A game called baseball, apparently close to rounders, was around from at least Tudor times. Similar in some respects to cricket, it does not, however, have a wicket to bowl at. What these games have in common is that the object – ball or stick, invariably called a cat – is projected and struck by some sort of club. Other games include:

tip-cat or cat and dog (a traditional outdoor game where a player uses a stick to hit a piece of wood into the air and then hits it again to drive it as far as possible).
cat and dog, which was for three players. Two defend foot-wide holes set about 26 feet apart with a club, or “dog.” A third player throws a four-inch cat toward the hole, and the defender hits it away.

Cricket clearly could be argued to be a variant of one or more of these games, especially when it is considered that the very old cricket bat, the one in use until perhaps 1720, appears to have been borrowed from hockey or bandy ball.

There was also a version of rounders that dated back to Tudor times, called base-ball, but not to be confused with modern baseball. This involved a bat but no wicket.

Hand-Ball games

Games in this category include fives and, especially, the old form of stoolball (illustrated here), which apparently originated in the fifteenth century, where a hand was used to defend a milking stool, and scoring runs was by striking the ball away. Stoolball is still played occasionally in Sussex, mostly by female teams, but a bat is now used, and the wicket is a board on a fairly tall pole. Link to video.

The earliest reference to stoolball is in 1510, not that long before the first reference to cricket. This game clearly has the idea of a wicket, also batting and bowling, so has ideas that could have fed into the development of cricket. Or maybe just a game with a common ancestor.

Generally, though, the idea that cricket grew out of another game is far from certain and is not greatly favoured by cricket historians.

Origin of the word cricket and other associated words

This is a subject which has attracted a great deal of thought and writing, none of it even vaguely conclusive, and not much of it, I suggest, terribly useful in understanding the game. I think that the appeal of the question arises because there are at least words to be seen in the historic record which might refer to cricket, but there is very little by way of other evidence. Words that have been suggested to be of relevance include:

creag – unknown game played by Prince Edward in 1300
cricc-crycc – old English word for crutch
Cricket – a northern word for a small stool
krick(-e) – middle Dutch, meaning a stick
criquet – old French word for stick
wiket – old North French word for gate
batte – old French word meaning to beat
batt – Gaelic word for staff
beil – old French word for horizontal piece of wood fixed on two stakes
stub – stump of tree

The possibility that the word cricket may have roots in a Continental European Language has caused some to speculate that the game itself may have started outside England. Mr Christian Wall addresses this possibility in a post in The Times comments section:

The idea of the Netherlands playing cricket first boils down to linguists speculating that the word cricket derives from Middle Dutch, which even if correct disproves the idea the Netherlands was playing cricket before England because the derivative would be from the original Middle Dutch term for hockey!

Criquet from French or cricc from Old English could also be the origin; I was always taught the former, but needless to say that has also led to the idea cricket may have first been played in France.

It is yet to be explained how other countries are supposed to have invented then totally stopped and forgotten playing cricket, why no Flanders or French native ever made any reference to cricket, how every foreign traveller to those areas failed to notice and reference a unique sport, and most of all, how cricket spread over the sea to England, but failed to spread even a few miles in mainland Europe.

Given the development of English, it should not surprise anyone if we are using a word derived from another language. “Stump” is of Germanic origin and spread to both Dutch and English.

The first seemingly secure reference to the work cricket in the context of games occurs in A worlde of wordes, or, Most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English, first published 1598. An Italian word, Sgrillare, is defined as ‘to play cricket-a-wicket and be merry’.

Similar games outside England

There are many bat and ball games known to have been developed outside England. Wikipedia¹ lists the following:

Gillidanda is an ancient sport originating from Punjab region of India that is still widely played throughout South Asia.
In Iran, a similar game is called Alak dolak (الک دلک) or Aluch Aghach (ألوچ آقاچ) by Persians and Turks, respectively.
In Azerbaijan, a similar game is called Çilingağac (Chilingaghaj).
In Ireland, a similar game is called Catty.
In Galicia, a similar game is called billarda.
In Catalonia and the Valencian Community, a similar game is called bòlit.
In Philippines, a game known as syatong or pati-kubra (in Morong, Rizal) is similar to gillidanda.
In Italy, a similar game known as Lippa,Lipe, Tirolo, or S-cianco is shown in the movie Watch Out, We’re Mad![8][9][10]
In Croatia, an old children’s shepherds’ game called Pikuća has rules that are almost identical to those of Gillidanda.
In the United States, a similar game is called pee-wee.
Dainty is a street ball game played in Schnitzelburg, Louisville in the United States.
In Poland, a similar game is known, called Klipa.
In Malaysia, a similar game is known as konda kondi.
In Norway, a similar game is known as vippe pinne.
In Russia and Ukraine, a similar game is known as chizhik (чижик).
In Slovenia, a similar game is known as pandolo.
In Mexico, the game is known as charangay or changais.
In Cuba, the game is known as Quimbumbia.
In Newfoundland, a similar traditional children’s game is known as Tiddly or Piddly.
In Ireland, there is a bat and ball game called Catty. ²
Among the Abenaki people of Canada and the United States, there is a game called Moineau.

My point about this list is that none of these games evolved to cricket (obviously) or anything remotely as sophisticated. Something unusual must have happened in England to move clubball games to a new level. What that was, we will never know, but I suggest it was probably more than simple evolution; rather, it was a piece of inspirational thinking that took root.

Concluding comments

My view is that the only impressive evidence to emerge from considerations of the pre-history of cricket is the Stoneyhurst experience. That tells us, with a reasonable degree of likelihood, that an embryonic form of cricket was sufficiently well established to make it a viable choice of activity for a newly-formed school before 1600. It was around this date, too, that the word cricket is definitely associated with game-playing.

The generally held theory is that cricket would have developed gradually, with numerous versions of folk cricket being played in villages, especially in the South East, where the game was to grow and become established, then spread to schools.

I would like to suggest that another view is possible. Perhaps it didn’t just grow. Perhaps it was invented, most likely by a schoolteacher, with a set of well-developed rules, which were then taken up and adopted by other schools, and then spread out into the community. I In favour of this, I would suggest that looking at the Stoneyhurst game, a good deal of structured thought needs to be given to produce a game that makes sense, is capable of being played competitively and sufficiently well-defined to ensure that all participants have a common understanding of what is happening. It also represents a step-change in terms of sophistication compared with other clubball games.

The Guildford reference is associated with the Guildford Grammar School, and the appearance of the game generally coincided with the growth in grammar schools, which followed the Reformation. I believe it is worth thinking about.