NCERT Extracts - History and Sport
Category : UPSC
The Historical Development of Cricket as a Game in England
- The first written 'Laws of Cricket9 were drawn up in 1744.
- The world's first cricket club was formed in Hambledon in the 1760s and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was founded in 1787.
- 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.
- It’s often said that the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.
- This means that Britain's military success was based on the values taught to schoolboys in its public schools. Eton was the most famous of these schools.
- The first Indian club, the Calcutta Cricket Club, was established in 1792.
- The tournament was initially called the Quadrangular, because it was played by four teams: the Europeans, the Parsis, the Hindus and the Muslims.
- It later became the Pentangular when a fifth team was added, namely, the Rest, which comprised all the communities left over, such as the Indian Christians. For example, Vijay Hazare, a Christian, played for the Rest.
- K. Nayudu, an outstanding Indian batsman of his time, lives on in the popular imagination when some of his great contemporaries like Palwankar Vithal and Palwankar Baloo have been forgotten because his career lasted long enough for him to play Test cricket for India while theirs did not.
- ICC - The Imperial Cricket Conference renamed the International Cricket Conference as late as 1965.
- The first one-day international cricket was played between England and Australia in 1971 in Melbourne.
- Pakistan has pioneered two great advances in bowling: the doosra and the 'reverse swing’.
- Hockey was introduced into India by the British army in colonial times.
- The first hockey club in India was started in Calcutta in 1885-1886.
- The brilliance and skill of players like the great Dhyan Chand brought India a string of Olympic gold medals.
- Between 1928 and 1956, India won gold medals in six consecutive Olympic Games.
