Lucky11| Early Cricket
Experts agree that cricket may have been invented during Saxon or Norman times by children living in the Weald, an area of thick woods and clearings in southeast England. The first reference to cricket as an adult sport was in 1611, and in the same year, a dictionary defined cricket as a children's game. There is also the idea that cricket may have descended from bowling, through the intervention of a batsman trying to prevent the ball from reaching its goal by hitting it far. Village cricket had developed by the mid-17th century and the first English 'county teams were formed in the second half of the century when 'local experts' of village cricket were hired as the first professionals. The earliest known game in which teams use county names dates back to 1709. In the first half of the 18th century, cricket established itself as the leading sport in London and the counties of southeast England. Its spread was limited by travel restrictions but it gradually gai...
