History of world cricket

Cricket has been an organized adult game since the seventeenth century when it first took the fancy of English gentlemen lying low in their country estates at the time of the Civil War. It became fashionable after the restoration under the sponsorship of powerful aristocratic patrons.By the later eighteenth century control of this fashionable and profitable new leisure activity was in the hands of a number of gentlemen’s clubs. By the nineteenth century these had evolved into county organisations which, led by Marylebone Criket Club, subsequently dominated English cricket. Their influence spread throughout the British Empire and survived the transition to the Commonwealth.In England, the emerging public schools, believing that cricket fostered qualities of manliness and leadership, proclaimed it to be more than a game, in fact an institution. Poets and parsons praised its ethical qualities. By the turn of the century cricket had come to assume profound political significance, especially for imperialists. An Indian prince declared it to be the finest flower of Empire, and in Australia cricket captains played a leading part in welding together the separate colonies into a nation.After the First World War, the dream-world began to crumble. At home the golden age gave way to unromantic but remarkably effective professionalism. The Test matches survived bodyline and grew in importance.