Beginning of Cricket

Posted by yasas on August 21st, 2010

Cricket, a game that have its own passion and rhythm. It is really wonderful game which plays between two teams. It?s game that has long history and Millions of fans around the world. This fair play game helps to build good friendships among the nations around the world.  

No one exactly knows when or where cricket began but there are some evidence that cricket was founded in England by children who were living in the Weald. Today we believe that cricket was survived as a children's game for many years before it was rapidly taken up by adults in the beginning of the 17th century. In 1598 it was known as creckett which means stick. After some time a European language expert of Bonn University gave a name to this game which also use in today "cricket" and that name was derives from the Middle Dutch.

There are 97 countries that plays cricket officially in different levels. ICC Full Member: 10 teams, ICC Associate Member: 32 teams, ICC Affiliate Member: 55 teams. Cricket is mainly dividing into three types.

1.       Limited Over Cricket ? In here each team gets 50 overs to their inning. This is the famous category in cricket. Many people like to watch limited over matches because there is some excitement in limited over matches.

2.       20-20 Cricket ? Same as the limited overs , But 20 overs per each team. More exciting and more tension.

3.       Test Cricket ? There is no overs limit per team like limited over cricket or like 20-20. Game goes for five continues days and 90 overs per day. And there are two innings per team. That means every team have to Bat and Bowl two times during the game. Test cricket known as the real cricket. Test cricket gives the idea of that matches are to ?test of strength?. To win a test cricket a team should have true talents. Because it is the longest form of the cricket that test various skills of players. Such as patience, strength, dedication.

The first ever test match was played between England and Australia in 15 March 1877. After that popularity of cricket started to grow fast and with this growing popularity country like India, West Indies became Test nations and member of Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) which was establish in 1909. After that test cricket have started to spread much rapidly and widely. Asian countries like Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh joined list of nations that play test cricket.

The first cricket world cup was held from 7 June to 21 June 1975 in England with participating of 8 countries around the world (Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, West Indies, Sri Lanka and East Africa).And the West Indies were the winners of first cricket world cup.