When was the First Cricket Match Being Played?

Have you ever imagined when cricket got the fame and origin? As per the old belief, in the year of 1597 the court of England got to know about ‘cricket’ when they were trying to solve an ownership dispute. This dispute was over a plot of common land in Gaidford, Surrey. A 59-year-old coroner, John Derrick, testified that he and his school friends had played cricket on the site fifty years earlier when they attended the Free School. Derrick's account proves beyond reasonable doubt that the game was being played in Surreycirca 1550, and is the earliest universally accepted reference to the game.

The first reference to cricket being played as an adult sport was in 1611, when two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church. In the same year, a dictionary defined cricket as a boys' game and this suggests that adult participation was a fresh development. Before 1611 it was usually believed that cricket survived as a children's game for many generations before it was taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th century.

There have been several speculations and arguments about the game's origins including some that it was created in France or Flanders.
However, possibly cricket was derived from bowls, assuming bowls is the older sport, by the involvement of a batsman trying to stop the ball from reaching its target by hitting it away.

By: Priyanka Negi

Content: Wikipedia