Talk:History of cricket

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Is this page really necessary, much of the history is covered in Test cricket and I think ODI stuff is also covered on its own page. Lisiate 00:00, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I'd say that history material from the Test and ODI pages should be consolidated and moved here. It forms a more coherent story together. This is also a place for the origins of cricket, which was a bit out of place in the main article. The structure of the cricket articles is a bit haphazard and I think some consolidation of subtopics is a good idea. How about I move all the history stuff here and then see how it looks? dmmaus 01:25, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
I've done the consolidation and added a significant amount of new material (codification of rules, rise of one-day cricket, World Cup, banning of South Africa). There's heaps more to add too. dmmaus 03:00, 13 May 2004 (UTC)
Excellent - well done. Much more coherent. The cricket articles really do need thinking about - after a little work on fielder yesterday, I found Fielding positions in cricket today :-/ -- ALoan 10:01, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


Contents

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[edit] Underarm dating

The text implies only underarm bowling existed prior to 1864. Can I challenge that? There are several John Leech cartoons in the 1850s complaining about the advent of "round arm" bowling (that it was so much faster) so if the rules changed in 1864 they must have trailed practice in games by at least a decade. --BozMo|talk 23:00, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC) see e.g. 1854 Punch Sketch

You're right - the rules did trail practice. Just as some bowlers today challenge umpires, so they did in the 1850s and 1860s (throwing was also a big problem then too!). Sometimes the bowlers got no-balled for breaking the rules, often they did not. jguk 10:27, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The change in 1864 came after Wilsher, the most notable and prevalent of the illegal overarm bowlers, was no-balled six times in a match. Finally the MCC had to give way to practice! jguk 19:14, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Illegality of cricket?

I have removed the reference to cricket being illegal from Cromwell's day up to a 1748 decision by the Court of the King's Bench. I have just started reading A Social History of English Cricket by Derek Birley - and even though I'm only up to the 3rd chapter, I'd heartily recommend it - It was the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1999. It doesn't refer to cricket being illegal at all, and the only reference to a 1748 court case I've seen so far is to a magistrate's decision. I have amended the article in line with this, jguk 19:20, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] India Debut...

"Finally, England matched up against one of its own colonies, India, on June 23, 1932, at Lord's." Is this necessary? Surely the West Indies were one of England's colonies (or indeed a collection of) and arguably Australia, Sth Africa, NZ et al;although Dominions in a legal sense, were colonies where cricket had taken root. Seems slightly misleading.

agree with that. They were all colonies.

[edit] Origins of cricket

I thought that there was a specific town in Hampshire, England that was called the home of cricket and where an old form of the game is still (once a year) played. It differs from modern cricket in that there are 12 players, they use curved sticks similar to hockey sticks and bowl underarm. I am surprised to see that there is no reference to this in the article. Also there is no reference to 'Bat and Trap' which is an old pub game with a more than passing resemblance to cricket still played in parts of Kent. I think there is an article on this sport on Wiki already.GordyB 10:17, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You'll be thinking of the village of Hambledon. Some aristocratic bigwigs started a club 2 miles away from the village. It lost its dominance after its key members joined the MCC (around 1787, when Lord's was founded). I'm not sure about this "old form of the game". The original Hambledon Club died centuries ago - although some have recently restarted it, jguk 18:31, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Missing Text...

Ummmm, why are there 2 subject titles under 'Controversies' that have no text under them at all? I was gonna delete on the spot, but this just seemed too strange to have no reasoning behind it.

[edit] Cricket and the USA

I had read that cricket was more popular than baseball in the USA up until the civil war. Can anyone add to that?

I don't know about that, but here's an interesting article with heaps of information on early USA and Canadian cricket and tours if anyone's interested. -- Ian ≡ talk 08:41, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pro-Cricket Reference Under 'The Future' Sub-Heading Needs Updating

I must add that under 'The Future' sub-heading it mentions that the Pro-Cricket league started in the US in 2004, but obviously that needs updating because not long after the Pro Cricket League being established it folded/ended for good after only 1 season. I generally don't follow cricket happenings in the US though, and don't live in the US, so I can't give much further detail unfourtunately.

[edit] Match fixing scandals

The article says absolutely nothing about the match fixing scandals in the 1990s and 2000. This is unbelievable considering how many teams it affected (Pakistan, India, South Africa and Australia, remember Tim May and Mark Waugh). It must be included soon. Also, the article does not talk about doping in the sport, or of Bob Woolmer's death and the assorted speculation during CWC 2007.203.188.253.179 (talk) 12:26, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Why don't you write something yourself? There ought to be brief mentions of the topics that you mention, but an article on the whole history of the game has too much ground to cover to go into much detail. Howerver there should be links to the main articles on these topics: Betting controversies in cricket, Category:Doping cases in cricket and Bob Woolmer. JH (talk page) 19:35, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

I normally try to ignore IP address input but what is unbelievable is that some people think history is what happened last week. The article's scope is a period of four hundred years and rather a lot has happened in all that time, plus we are limited to 35kb. Betting scandals date back to the 17th century (see all the references to gambling); matchfixing was a major controversy in 1817 when Lambert was banned for life; so what's new? Why should the article talk about doping which is a minor problem in cricket compared with the likes of athletics and cycling? Bob Woolmer's death was tragic but so were the deaths of hundreds of other cricketers over 400 years: most tragic of all have been the players who were killed on the field of play. As for CWC 2007, do you honestly think history will want to remember a fiasco like that? --The Ghost | séance 09:47, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

This is a fine article but it needs inline citations although the vast majority of content has certainly come from the sources listed at the bottom of the page. I am concerned about a couple of paragraphs where I have specifically requested citations: the one about a Persian origin is probably bogus; the one about the Isle of Man just needs verification. --Jim Hardie (talk) 13:20, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

"There is also a theory that it originated from ancient bat-and-ball games played in the Indian subcontinent, which were then transported to Europe via Persia and the near east by merchants, and eventually developed into the game of cricket in England" Is there any indication that this is not just revisionist nonsense by an insular Indian who can't accept his national sport has foreign origins? 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article rating

I've just made use of the recently adopted B-class criteria to rate the article that was formerly B-class and top importance. The criteria don't affect the importance so I've left that as top. But using the B-class criteria, the article fails the test because it doesn't meet criteria 1 and 5. These are:

  • 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points have appropriate inline citations.
  • 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams.

Although I don't like inline citations personally (because I think they are over-used), I have to agree that this article is short of references and that is something I should have addressed when I rewrote it last year. Leave that with me.

As for point 5, I'm not really sure how much supporting material is required. An infobox is irrelevant here and really it is only images that could usefully be added. There are currently four, plus the small template at the bottom of the page. Is four sufficient for B-class or should there be more? --BlackJack | talk page 06:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Four seems sufficient to me. JH (talk page) 08:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
On reflection, I agree. Each article will have to be considered individually. I've altered Q5 above to a "yes".
Which leaves the inline citations........ --BlackJack | talk page 10:40, 5 May 2008 (UTC)