United Kingdom - Cricket
"The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton" is an observation ascribed to the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), who was a graduate of Eton College as well as a commander in chief of the British and allied armies at Waterloo. The British were given to believe the main reason that tipped the balance in their favour in wars was the superior character of its young men which was built in the boarding schools at the time of playing games such as cricket. Eton was one of the very famous English boarding schools and trained English boys for careers in the military, civil service as well as the church. All the famous public schools saw team sports such as cricket not just as outdoor play, but as an organised way of teaching English boys, the discipline, the importance of hierarchy, the remarkable skills, the codes of honour along with the qualities of leadership. Somehow it suited the English ruling class to believe that it was the superior character of its young men built on playing fields which tipped the balance.
In his book The Lion and the Unicorn (1941), the novelist George Orwell wrote: ‘Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.’ Matthew Arnold, in an essay 'An Eton Boy’, published in the Fortnightly Review of June 1881, wrote: "Alas! disasters have been prepared in those playing-fields as well as victories; disasters due to inadequate mental training - to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity."
Cricket is to the British what baseball is to Americans a national game. In both games, players use a ball and a bat and score runs, but there the similarity ends. A British friend might be able to explain how cricket is played and what a “sticky wicket” is.
English cricket has a racism problem. With cricket, a “colonial mentality” is at pla, with wealthy, private-school-educated children dominating the Professional Cricketers’ Association, the representative body for professional players in England and Wales. While 30 percent of recreational cricket players across England and Wales have South Asian backgrounds, just 4 percent of professional cricketers are British Asian, according to English cricket’s governing body, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). Azeem Rafiq, a former player for Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC), publicly shared his experiences of discrimination. An investigation found Rafiq a “victim of harassment and bullying” during his two stints with YCCC between 2008 and 2018, yet the top club dismissed the harassment as “friendly banter” between team players, and has said no action will be taken against his perpetrators.
The scandal has shaken English sport, cost Yorkshire sponsors and the right to host England internationals, seen the club’s top brass quit, and embroiled former England captain Michael Vaughan and present England skipper Joe Root. Former Yorkshire chairman Roger Hutton resigned following criticism of Yorkshire’s handling of an investigation into the claims first made by Azeem Rafiq in 2020. In his resignation letter, Hutton said there had been “constant unwillingness” from members of Yorkshire’s hierarchy “to apologise and to accept racism and to look forward”. Some of English cricket’s biggest names have been dragged into the controversy. Rafiq said ex-England captain Vaughan told him and two other players of Asian origin that there were “too many of you lot, we need to do something about it” before a match in 2009.
Former cricketer Azeem Rafiq has told a British parliamentary inquiry 15 November 2021 that he was “humiliated” by the racist abuse he suffered at Yorkshire cricket club. In more than an hour of testimony, Rafiq, who is of Pakistani descent, catalogued a damning culture of widespread racism at England’s most successful cricket club. He and other players with Asian backgrounds were subjected to comments such as “You lot sit over there,” and being called “Paki” and “elephant washers”, the 30-year-old told the parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) panel. Rafiq said the racism he endured at Yorkshire was “without a shadow of doubt” replicated across the country and said the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) were more concerned with box-ticking exercises than increasing the number of South Asian players becoming professionals.
The International Cricket Council was founded in 1909 by Australia, England and South Africa. These three founding members have been joined by seven further full members, 32 associate members and 54 affiliate members. The game now boasts 96 member countries from all parts of the globe.
The game of cricket may be called the national summer pastime of the English-speaking peoples. Cricket is defined in the New English Dictionary as "an open-air game played with bats, ball and wickets by two sides of eleven players each; the batsman defends his wicket against the ball which is bowled by a player of the opposing side, the other players of this side being stationed about the field in order to catch or stop the ball." The laws define that the score shall be reckoned by runs. The side which scores the greatest number of runs wins the match. Each side has two innings taken alternately, except that the side which leads by 150 runs in a three days' match or by 100 runs in a two days' match or by 75 runs in a one day match shall have the option of requiring the other side to "follow their innings." In England cricket is invariably played on turf wickets, but in the Colonies matting wickets are often employed, and sometimes matches have taken place on sand, earth and other substances.
The etymology of the word itself is the subject of much dispute. The Century Dictionary connects with O. Fr. criquet, " a stick used as a mark in the game of bowls," and denies the connexion with A.S. crice or cry, a staff. A claim has also been made for cricket, meaning a stool, from the stool at which the ball was bowled, while in the wardrobe account of King Edward I for the year 1300 (p. 126) is found an allusion to a game called creag. Skeat, in his Etymological Dictionary, states that the word is probably derived from A.S. crice (repudiated by the first authority quoted), the meaning of which is a staff, and suggests that the " et " is a diminutive suffix; the word is of the same origin as "crutch." Finally the New English Dictionary traces the O. Fr. criquet, defined by Littr6 as "jeu d'addresse," to M. Flem. Krick, Kriike, baston A s'appuyer, quinette, potence.
In a MS. of the middle of the 13th century, in the King's library, 14 Bv, entitled Chronique d'Anglelerre, depuis Ethelberdjusqtfd Hen. III., there is found a grotesque delineation of two male figures playing a game with a bat and ball. This is undoubtedly the first known drawing of what was destined to develop into the scientific cricket of modern times. The lefthand figure is that of the batsman, who holds his Weapon upright in the right hand with the handle downwards. The right-hand figure shows the catcher, whose duty is at once apparent by the extension of his hands. In another portion of the same MS., however, there is a male figure pointing a bat towards a female figure in the attitude of catching, but the ball is absent. In a Bodleian Library MS., No. 264, dated the 18th of April 1344, and entitled Romance of the Good King Alexander, fielders for the first time appear in addition to the batsman and bowler. All the players are monks (not female figures, as Strutt misinterprets their dress in his Sports and Pastimes), and on the extreme left of the picture, the bowler, with his cowl up, poises the ball in the right hand with the arm nearly horizontal. The batsman comes next with his cowl down, a little way only to the right, standing sideways to the bowler with a long roughly-hewn and slightly curved bat, held upright, handle downwards in the left hand. On the extreme right come four figures—with cowls alternately down and up, and all having their hands raised in an attitude to catch the ball. It has been argued that the bat was always held in the left hand at this date, since on the Opposite page of the same MS. a solitary monk is figured with his cowl down, and also holding a somewhat elongated oval-shaped implement in his left hand; but it is unsafe to assume that the accuracy of the artist can be trusted.
The word "cricket" occurs about the year 1550. In Russell's History of Guildford it appears there was a piece of waste land in the parish of Holy Trinity in that city, which was enclosed by one John Parish, an innholder, some five years before Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. In 35 Elizabeth (1593) evidence was taken before a jury and a verdict returned, ordering the garden to be laid waste again and disinclosed. Among other witnesses John Derrick, gent., and one of H.M.'s coroners for Surrey, deposed he had known the ground for fifty years or more, and "when he was a scholler in the free school of Guildford, he and several of his fellowes did runne and play there at crickett and other plaies." In the original edition of Stow's Survey of London (1598) the word does not occur, though he says, "The ball is used by noblemen and gentlemen in tennis courts, and by people of the meaner sort in the open fields and streets."
At the close of the 18th century, cricket became established as the national game, and the custom became general to play the first game of each year on Good Friday. The M.C.C. (or Marylebone Cricket Club), which ranks as the leading club devoted to the game in any part of the globe, sprang from the old Artillery Ground Club, which played at Finsbury until about 1780, when the members migrating to White Conduit Fields became the White Conduit Cricket Club. In 1787 they were remodelled under their present title, and moved to Lord's ground, then on the site of what is now Dorset Square; thence in 1811 to Lord's second ground nearer what is now the Regent's Canal; and in 1814, when the canal was cut, to what is now Lord's ground in St John's Wood.
The oldest laws of cricket extant are those drawn up by the London Club in 1744. These were amended at the " Star and Garter " in Pall Mall, London, in 1755, and again in 1774, and were also revised by the M.C.C. in 1788. From this time the latter club has been regarded as the supreme authority, even though some local modifications were effected in Australia. Concerning the implements of the game, in the 1744 rules it was declared that the weight of the ball must be "between five and six ounces," and it was not until 1774 that it was decided that it " shall weigh not less than five ounces and a half nor more than five ounces and three-quarters," as it is to the present day. For the bat, English willow has been proverbially found the best wood. The oldest extant bats resemble a broad and curved hockey stick, and it has been claimed to be an evolution of the club employed in the Irish game of "hurley." The straight blade was adopted as soon as the bowler began to pitch the ball up, an alteration which took place about 1750.
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