7. HISTORY &
SPORTS: THE SPORTS OF CRICKET
THE IMPORTANCE OF CRICKET IN THE MODERN TIMES
Cricket as a
sport has one of the largest followings in the world. Anyone who knows to speak
the word ‘Cricket’ can assume himself to be an expert in the game.
(i) It is the
most widely played game, especially in the former Commonwealth countries. Its
range includes from Gully- Mohalla cricket to international test matches.
(ii) It is the
biggest source of entertainment, not only for thousands and thousands of the
spectators at the playing grounds but also other millions who watch a
ball-by-ball progress on TV sets, etc.
(iii) Every
single ball generates passion.
(iv) It is one
way in which people compete with each other, stay fit and express their social
loyalties.
(v) Cricket
matches are organized to establish friendship between Nations; cricketers are
seen as ambassadors of the country.
(vi) Cricket
has come to represent the unity of the country.
(vii) Cricket
has emerged as the biggest commercial venture; it is a whole big industry which
generates jobs and income on a large scale.
(a) Invention of Cricket and its spread:
(i) Cricket was
invented in Southeastern England in the 19th century. The
Britishers took the game to all those places where they went, i.e., to their colonies
in Asia and Africa. This is now cricket became a popular game in the former
colonies of Great Britain.
(ii) After
these colonies gained independence from their former rulers, they were
organized in want came to be known as the Commonwealth. The game of cricket,
therefore, is limited to the members of the Commonwealth. Important cricket
playing countries are India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Australia, New
Zealand, England, West Indies, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Kenya.
(c) Cricket represent’s:
Cricket had
been invented in England; it became intimately linked to the culture of the
19th century Victorian society. The game was expected to represent all that the
Englishmen were supposed to value and respect, i.e.,
(i) Fair play,
(ii)
Discipline, and
(iii)
Gentlemanliness.
It was in this
spirit that game was played till recent times, before commercialization took
over the game. With commercialization, money has become the ruling deity of
game.
THE PECULIARITIEST CRICKET
Modern cricket
has different varieties; among these the two important ones are:
(i) Test
matches, and
(ii) one-day
matches. Test matches are played over a longer period often (five days
presently), whereas a one day match is restricted to a limited of over that
each side is to bowl to other side. Originally, cricket developed in the form
of test matches.
(a) There were certain
features of this game that made it different then other games:
(i) Test
matches were open-ended games. There was no time defined. they would go on till
the result was decided (presently a test match is a five day game, if no result
is achieved in five days it is declared a drawn game). There is no other game
with such a larger time span.
(ii) In
cricket, the length of the pitch is specified-22 yard-but the size or shape of the
ground is not defined. This is not so any other game.
(iii) In
cricket, all important tools are made of natural materials, unlike golf and
tennis where man-made materials are used.
(iv) In
cricket, a player is a member of a team. He plays for the team and not for
individual laurels.
(b)Peculiarities of cricket are shaped by its historical beginnings
as a village game:
One, cricket’s
rules were made before the industrial Revolution. The rhythms of village life
were slower. A match could go on and on till was decided. Games that were
codified after the Industrial Revolution were strictly time limited to fit the
routines of industrial city life.
Two, cricket
was originally played on common lands in the countryside. The size of the
common lands varied from village, and region to region. Therefore, it was left
open to decide the boundaries of the ground in the area in which the match was
being played.
There, unlike
other games cricket’s most important tools are all made of natural, pre-industrial
materials. The bat is made of wood as are the stumps and the bails. The ball is
made with leather twine and cork.
In the matter
of protective equipment has been influenced by technological change. The
invention of vulcanized rubber led to the introduction of pads in 1848.
Protective gloves were introduced soon thereafter. Helmets made out of metal
and synthetic lightweight materials became an important part of protective
equipment. But technological change did not materially alter the essence of the
basic tools of the game, viz.,
(i) Bat,
(ii) Stumps,
(iii) Bails,
and
(iv) Ball.
These continue to be made out of natural materials.
LAWS OF CRICKET
(a) The first written ‘Laws of Cricket’:
The first
written ‘Laws of Cricket’ were drawn up in 1744. They stated, the principals
shall choose from amongst the gentlemen present two umpires who shall
absolutely decide all disputes. The stumps must be 22 inches high and the bail
across them six inches. The ball must be between 5 and 6 ounces, and the two
sets of stumps 22 yards apart. There were no limits on the shape or size of the
bat.
(b) Major changes that took amine to the game of cricket during the
1760s and 1770s:
During the
1760s and 1770s many changes took place in the game of cricket. it became
common to pitch the ball through the air, rather than roll it along the ground
. This change gave bowlers the options of length, deception through the air,
plus increased pace. It also opened new possibilities for spin and swing. In
responses, batsmen had to master timing and shot selection. One immediate
result was the replacement of the curved bat with the straight one. All of this
raised the premium on skill and reduced the influence of rough ground brute
force.
(ii) In 1774, the first leg-before law was
published.
(iii) A third
stump became common.
(iv) By 1780,
three days had become the length of a major match, and this year also saw the
creation of the first six seam cricket ball.
(c) Important changes that occurred in the game of cricket during the
19 th century:
During the 19th
century the important changes that occurred in the game of cricket can be
briefly stated as follows:
(i) The rule
about wide ball was applied.
(ii) The exact
circumference of the ball was specified.
(iii)
Protective equipment like pads and gloves became available.
(iv) Boundaries
were introduced; earlier all runs were scored by running between the stumps.
over am bowling became legal.
CRICKET AND VICTORIAN ENGLAND
The organization
of cricket in England reflected the nature of English society.
The players
were divided into two groups: (A) Professionals and (B) Amateurs.
(i) Those
persons who played cricket for a living were called professionals.
The wages of
professionals were paid by patronage or subscription or gate money. The game
was seasonal and did not offer employment the year round.
Most
professionals worked as miners or, in other forms of working class employment
in winter, the off-season.
(ii) The rich
who could afford to play for pleasure were called amateurs and the poor who
played it for a living were called professionals.
(a) The rich were amateurs for two reasons:
One, they
considered sport a kind of leisure. To play for the pleasure of playing and not
for money was an aristocratic value. Two, there was not enough money in the
game for the rich to be interested.
(i) The social
superiority of amateurs was built the customs of cricket. Amateurs were called
Gentlemen while professionals had to be content with being described as
Players.
(ii) They
entered the ground from different entrances.
(iii) Amateurs
tended to be batsmen, leaving the energetic, hardworking aspects of the game,
like fast bowling, to the professionals. That is partly why the rules of the
game always give the benefit of the doubt to the batsman.
(b) Cricket a batsman’s game:
Cricket is a
batsman’s game because its rules were made to favour ‘Gentlemen’, who did most
of the batting. The social superiority of the amateur was also the captain of a
cricket team was traditionally a batsman: not because batsmen were naturally
better captains but because they were generally Gentlemen. Captains of teams,
whether club teams or national sides, were always amateurs. It was not till the
1930s that the English Test team was led by a professional, the Yorkshire batsman,
Len Hutton.
(c) “Battle of
Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton”:
In actual fact
the Napoleonic wars were won because of the economic contribution of the iron
works of Scotland and Wales, the mills of Lancashire and the financial houses
of the City of London. it was the English lead in trade and industry that made
Britain the world’s greatest power, but it suited the English ruling class to
believe that it was the superior character of its young men, built in boarding
schools , like Eton, playing gentlemanly games like cricket , that tipped the
balance.
THE SPREAD OF CRICKET
(i) In
colonies, cricket was established as a popular sport either by white settlers
(as in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies and
Kenya) or by local elites who wanted to copy the habits of their colonial
masters, as in India.
(ii) While
British imperial officials brought the game to the colonies, they made little
effort to spread the game, especially in colonial territories.
(iii) Playing
cricket became a sign of superior social and racial status, and the
Afro-Caribbean population was discouraged from participating in organised club
cricket, which remained dominated by white plantation owners and their
servants.
(iv) The first
non-white club in the West Indies was established towards the end of the
nineteenth century, and even in this case its members were light-skinned
mulattos.
(v) Despite the
exclusiveness of the cricket elite in the Wheat Indies, the game became hugely
popular in the Caribbean.
(vi) At the
time of their independence many of the political leaders of Caribbean countries
like Forbes Burnham and Eric Williams saw in the game a chance for salt-respect
and international standing.
(vii) When the
West Indies won its first Test series against England in 1950s , it was
celebrated as a national achievement , as a way of demonstrating that West
Indians were the equals of white Englishmen.
(viii) The
first time a black pack led the West Indies Test team was in 1960 when Frank
Worrell was named captain.
(ix) Through
the early history of Indian first class cricket, teams were not organized on
geographical principles and it was not till 1932 that a national tern was given
the right to represent India in a Test match.
(a) Cricket, Race and Religion:
(i) Cricket in
colonial India was organised on the principle of race and religion. The first
record we have of cricket being played in India is from 1721. The first Indian
club, the Calcutta Cricket Club was established in 1792. Through the eighteenth
century cricket in India was almost wholly a sport played by British military
men and civil servants in all-white clubs and gymkhanas. Indians were
considered to have no talent for the game and certainly not meant to play it.
But they did.
(ii) The
origins of India cricket, that is, cricket played by Indian are to be found in
Bombay and the first Indian community to start playing the game was the small
community of Zoroastrians, the Parsis .the Parsis founded the first Indian
cricket club , the Oriental Cricket Club in Bombay in 1848. The white cricket
elite in India offered no help to the enthusiastic Parsis. In fact, there was a
quarrel between the Bombay Gymkhana, a white-only club, and Paris cricketers
over the use of a public park. When it became clear that the colonial
authorities were prejudiced in favour of their white compatriots, the Parsis
built own gymkhana to play cricket in. a Parsis team beat the Bombay Gymkhana
at cricket in 1889, just four years after the foundation of the Indian National
Congress in 1885.
(iii) By the
1890s, Hindus and Muslims were buys gathering funds and support for a Hindu
Gymkhana and an Islam Gymkhana. In the late nineteenth century, many Indian
institutions and movements were organised around the idea of religious
community because the colonial state encouraged these division and was quick to
recognise communal institutions. Applications that used the communal categories
favoured by the colonial state were likely to be approved.
(iv) This
history of gymkhana cricket led to first-class cricket being organised on
communal and racial lines. The tournament was initially called Quadrangular,
because it was played by four teams: the Europeans, the Parsis, the Hindu and
the Muslims. It later became the Pent angular when a fifth team was added,
namely, the Rest, which comprised all the communities left over, such as the
Indian Christians.
(v) By the late 1930s and early 1940s,
journalists, cricketers and political leaders had begun to criticize the racial
and communal foundations of the Pent angular torment. They condemned the Pent
angular as a communally divisive competition that was out of place in a time
when nationalists were trying to unite India’s diverse population. a rive
first-class tournament on regional lines , the National Cricket Championship
(later named the Ranji Trophy), was established but not until independence did
it properly replace the Pent angular . Pent angular was a colonial toumament
and it died with the Raj.
(b)Mahatma Gandhi’s views on cricket.
Mahatma Gandhi
believed that sport was essential for creating a balance between the body and
the mind.
However, he
often emphasized that games like cricket and hockey were imported into India by
the British and were replacing traditional games. Suck games as cricket,
hockey, football and tennis were for the privileged, he believed. They showed a
colonial mindset and were a less active education then the simple exercise of
those who worked on the land.
THE MODERN TRANSFORMATION
(i) Modern
cricket is dominated by Tests and one day internationals, played between
national teams.
(ii) The
players Indian fans remember from the ear of the Pent angular and the
quadrangular are those who were fortunate enough to play Test cricket.
(iii)
C.K.Nayudu, an outstanding Indian batsman of his time, lives on in the popular
imagination when some of his great contemporaries like Palwanker Vithal and
Palwanker Baloo have forgotten because his career lasted long enough for him to
play Test cricket for India while theirs did not.
(iv) Nayudu has
past his cricketing prime when he played for India in its first Test matches
against England starting in 1932; his place in India’s cricket history is
assured because he was the country’s first Test captain.
(v) Indica
entered the world of Test cricket in 1932s,a decade and a half before it became
an independent nation. This was possible because Test cricket from its origins
1877 was organised as a contest between different parts of the British empire,
not sovereign nations.
(vi) He first
Test was played between England and Australia when Australia was still a white
settler colony, not even a self-governing dominion.
(a) The name of
ICC was changed from the Imperial Cricket Conference to the International
Cricket
Conference:
The imperial
Cricket Conference was responsible for the regulation of the game of cricket
throughout the world. it was dominated by two nations , England and Australia. They
had the veto rights.
With the
disappearance of the British Empire, the organization of world cricket was also
undergoing a change.
Two major changes suggestive of decolonization and de imperialism
were:
(i) The name of
Imperial Cricket Conference was changed into the international Cricket
Conference.
(ii) The veto
right were abolished. Equal membership was introduced.
The
significance of the shift of the ICC headquarters from London to Dubai.
The shift the
ICC headquarters from London to Dubai signified that the balance of power in
cricket was shifting from ex-colonial power and white men to South Asis, who
have come to dominate the world cricket.
(b) The impact of decolonization on cricket:
Cricket had
developed as a game in colonial countries. It spread to those countries where the
colonial rulers went. In course of time, colonies began to produce better
played of cricket then were available with the colonial power themselves. But
the colonial powers could successfully curb the growth of such talent. With
decolonization, all such restriction s on the growth of cricket stood removed.
Some significant
changes began to take place in the organization of cricket:
(i) The name of
the Imperial Cricket Conference was changed into the International Cricket
Conference.
(ii) The
headquarters of the ICC were shifted from London to Dubai.
(iii) Veto right of England and Australia in
ICC were removed. All members got equal rights.
(iv) England
had to boycott South Africa who did not permit non-white players to represent
their country.
(v) It came to
be accepted that the laws of cricket could not continue to be framed for
British or Australian conditions of play. The techniques of ‘doosra’ and
‘reverse swing’ evolved by the Asian bowlers to suit their conditions came to
be accepted and endorsed.
COMMERUES MEDIA AND CRICKET TODY
Advances in
technology had a dramatic effect on the game of cricket. On-field, the concept
of ‘Third Umpire’ was put in practice. a number of major decisions on field
could be referred to him as he had the benefit of replays of every event from
all possible angles. Stumps carried cameras; umpires could talk direct to the
ground staff and others from their radios. Score – boards became more
functional and informative. Off-field, organization of matches became much more
convenient with easy free flow required information. With the advent of television,
cricket became a marketable game which could generate huge revenues.
(i) Cricket
boards became rich by selling television rights to television companies.
(ii) Television
channels made money by selling television spots to companies who were happy to
pay large sums of money to air commercial for their products to cricket’s
captive television audience.
(iii)
Continuous television coverage made cricketers celebrities who, besides being
paid better by their cricket boards, now made even large sums of money by
making commercials for a wide range of products , from tyres to colas, on
television.
(iv) Television
coverage expanded the audience for the game by beaming cricket into small towns
and villages.
(v) It also
broadened cricket’s social base. Children who had never previously had the
chance to watch international cricket because they lived outside the big
cities, where top-level cricket was played, could now watch and learn by
imitating their heroes.
(vi) The
technology of satellite television and the world wide reach of multinational
television companies created a global market for cricket.
Contribution of Kerry Packer in development of cricket
Kerry Packer
was an Australian television tycoon. He saw the money-making potential of
cricket as a television sport. He introduced ‘World Series Cricket’. He signed
up fifty-one of the world’s leading cricketers against the wishes of the
national cricket boards and for about two years staged unofficial Tests One-Day
internationals. The innovations he introduced during this time to make cricket
more attractive to television audiences endured and changed the nature of the
game.
Coloured dress,
protective helmets, filed restrictions, cricket under lights, became a standers
part of the post- Packer game. Crucially, Packer drove home the lesson that
cricket was a marketable game, which could generate huge revenues.
(a) The centre
of gravity in cricket has shifted away from the old:
(i) A more
impotent sign that the centre of gravity in cricket has shifted away from the
old, Anglo-Australian axis is that innovations in cricket technique in recent
years have mainly come from the proactive of sub continental terns in countries
like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
(ii) Pakistan
has pioneered two great advances in bowling: the doosra and the; rivers swing’.
(iii)
Initially, both innovations were greeted with great suspicion by countries like
Britain and Australia which saw them as an underhanded, illegal bending of the
laws of cricket.
(iv) In time,
it came to be accepted that the laws of cricket could not continue to be framed
for British or
Australian
conditions of play, and they became part of the technique of ll bowlers,
everywhere in the world.
(v) Today, the
global marketplace has made Indian players the best-paid, most famous
cricketers in the game, men for whom the world is a stage.
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