The history of cricket.

This section is a history of cricket: where it may have come from, how its Laws were written and rewritten, how Test cricket, the Ashes and the ICC began, how bowling and protective equipment changed, and how the one-day and Twenty20 formats arrived. It is history only. Nothing in it teaches batting, bowling, fielding or wicketkeeping, and the deaths it mentions are told briefly, as published history. For how the game is organised today, start with Learn.

How these pages are written

• Every date has a source. Each fact is given with the governing body, club, museum, historian or publication it comes from, and each page lists its sources.
• Origins are theories. Nobody knows where cricket began. The theories are set out with who holds each, and the earliest firm document, a Guildford court record of January 1598 (1597 in the calendar of the time), is treated as the start of the dated story.
• Disputed questions get every version. Our research recorded 32 points where sources disagree, among them the first match at Lord's, the year roundarm became legal, when and by whom the Ashes urn was given and what is inside it, the year the ICC took its present name, which helmet was "first", and several dates in the women's game and the corruption cases. Each is given both ways on the page concerned.
• The governing bodies' own records come first. The Laws' dates follow the MCC's own list, the ICC's names and dates follow the ICC's history pages, and Bodyline follows the MCC and the historian Martin Williamson; we have not read the original Bodyline cables.
• Corruption only as official decisions. The match-fixing page gives the body, the date and the sanction, and any later court ruling that changed it, and nothing else.
• Wikipedia is named when it stands alone, and anything we saw only in a search summary, or that rests on one source we could not check, is marked unconfirmed or left out.
• No money. These pages give no prices, prize money, fines or other money figures.

What is in this section

Beginnings and the Laws

Origins sets out the rival theories, the Guildford record, the first adult and county matches, Hambledon, Thomas Lord and the founding of the MCC, and the game's spread overseas. The early Laws lists every Code from 1744 to the 2017 Code and its 2026 edition, dated as the MCC dates them. Overarm bowling follows the bowling arm from underarm through roundarm to the 1864 Law and today's 15-degree rule.

Test cricket and its governing body

The first Test and the Ashes runs from Melbourne in March 1877 to The Oval in 1882 and the disputed story of Ivo Bligh's urn, which the MCC says is not and never has been a trophy. The ICC through the years follows the Imperial Cricket Conference of 1909 to the International Cricket Council, so named in July 1989. Bodyline covers the 1932-33 series, the cables between the boards and the Laws that followed.

A wider game

Women's cricket history starts in 1745 and includes the first women's Test of 1934, the 1973 World Cup held two years before the men's, and the first Twenty20 international in August 2004, before the men's first in February 2005. World Series Cricket covers Kerry Packer's breakaway of 1977 to 1979 and the court case that struck down the bans on its players. One-day and T20 cricket runs from the 1963 Gillette Cup and the first ODI of 1971 to the World Cups and the T20 era.

Protection, politics and integrity

The helmet explains why three different players are called the first to wear one, and how helmets moved from personal choice to a standard and to rules. South Africa: isolation and return follows the path from 1961 and the D'Oliveira affair to the 1970 suspension and the return of 1991. Match-fixing and official findings records the decisions of boards, tribunals and courts. The timeline puts the main dated events in one table.

Related reading

The ICC and the MCC as they are today are described on the ICC and the MCC and the Laws. Recent results are in Events, today's helmet rules and the Phillip Hughes inquest in Safety, equipment rules and standards in Equipment, and terms used across the site in the glossary.