Friday 23 May 2014

Cool Cricketers Photos

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players each on a field at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. Each team takes its turn to bat, attempting to score runs, while the other team fields. Each turn is known as aninnings.
The bowler delivers the ball to the batsman who attempts to hit the ball with his bat away from the fielders so he can run to the other end of the pitch (which is counted as one run) without getting run out (the event in which the fielder throws the ball directly onto wickets or to a player who is near to wickets so he can dislodge them from the ground before the batsman or the non-striker has reached the crease). Each batsman (the other is called non-striker) continues batting until he is out. The batting team continues batting until ten batsmen are out or specified number of overs (6 countable balls bowled is 1 over) have been bowled, at which point the teams switch roles and the fielding team comes in to bat.
In professional cricket the length of a game ranges from 20 overs of six bowling deliveries per side to Test cricket played over five days. The Laws of Cricket are maintained by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) with additional Standard Playing Conditions for Test matches and One Day Internationals.[1]
Cricket was first played in southern England in the 16th century. By the end of the 18th century, it had developed to be the national sport of England. The expansion of the British Empire led to cricket being played overseas and by the mid-19th century the first international match was held. ICC, the game's governing body, has 10 full members.[2] The game is most popular in Australasia,England, the Indian subcontinent, the West Indies and Southern Africa.
Early cricket was at some time or another described as "a club striking a ball (like) the ancient games of club-ball, stool-ball, trap-ball, stob-ball".[3] Cricket can definitely be traced back to Tudor times in early 16th-century England. Written evidence exists of a game known as creag being played by Prince Edward, the son of Edward I (Longshanks), at Newenden, Kent in 1301[4] and there has been speculation, but no evidence, that this was a form of cricket.
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A number of other words have been suggested as sources for the term "cricket". In the earliest definite reference to the sport in 1598,[5] it is called creckett. Given the strong medieval trade connections between south-east England and the County of Flanders when the latter belonged to the Duchy of Burgundy, the name may have been derived from the Middle Dutch[6] krick(-e), meaning a stick (crook); or the Old English cricc or cryce meaning a crutch or staff.[7] In Old French, the word criquet seems to have meant a kind of club or stick.[8] In Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, he derived cricket from "cryce, Saxon, a stick".[9] Another possible source is the Middle Dutch word krickstoel, meaning a long low stool used for kneeling in church and which resembled the long low wicket with two stumps used in early cricket.[10] According to Heiner Gillmeister, a European language expert of Bonn University, "cricket" derives from the Middle Dutch phrase for hockeymet de (krik ket)sen (i.e., "with the stick chase").[11] Dr Gillmeister believes that not only the name but the sport itself is of Flemish origin.[12]

The first English touring team on board ship at Liverpool in 1859

The earliest definite reference to cricket being played in England (and hence anywhere) is in evidence given at a 1598 court case which mentions that "creckett" was played on common land in Guildford, Surrey, around 1550. The court in Guildford heard on Monday, 17 January 1597 (Julian date, equating to the year 1598 in the Gregorian calendar) from a 59 year-old coronerJohn Derrick, who gave witness that when he was a scholar at the "Free School at Guildford", fifty years earlier, "hee and diverse of his fellows did runne and play [on the common land] at creckett and other plaies."[13][14] It is believed that it was originally a children's game but references around 1610[14] indicate that adults had started playing it and the earliest reference to inter-parish or village cricket occurs soon afterwards. In 1624, a player called Jasper Vinall was killed when he was struck on the head during a match between two parish teams in Sussex.[15]
During the 17th century, numerous references indicate the growth of cricket in the south-east of England. By the end of the century, it had become an organised activity being played for high stakes and it is believed that the first professionals appeared in the years following theRestoration in 1660. A newspaper report survives of "a great cricket match" with eleven players a side that was played for high stakes in Sussex in 1697 and this is the earliest known reference to a cricket match of such importance.