INTRODUCTION 

The sport of cricket has a known history beginning in the late 16th century England. It became an established sport in the country in the 18th century and developed globally in the 19th and 20th centuries. International matches have been played since the 19th-century and formal Test cricket matches are considered to date from 1877. Cricket is the world’s second most popular spectator sport, after association football (soccer).
 
Internationally, cricket is governed by the International Cricket Council (ICC), which has over one hundred countries and territories in membership, although only twelve currently play Test cricket.
 
The game’s rules are defined in the “Laws of cricket”. The game has various formats, ranging from T-10(Ten-10) played in around 90 minutes to Test matches, which can last up to five days.
 
 
HISTORY OF CRICKET

ORIGIN 

Cricket was created during Saxon or Norman times by children living in the Weald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England that lies across Kent and Sussex.The first definite written reference is from the end of the 16th century.
 
There have been several speculations about the game’s origins, including some that it was created in France or Flanders. The earliest of these speculative references is from 1300 and concerns the future King Edward II playing at “creag and other games” in both Westminster and Newenden. It has been suggested that “creag” was an Old English word for cricket, but expert opinion is that it was an early spelling of “craic”, meaning “fun and games in general”.
 
It is generally believed that cricket survived as a children’s game for many generations before it was increasingly taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th century. Possibly cricket was derived from bowls, assuming bowls is the older sport, by the intervention of a batsman trying to stop the ball from reaching its target by hitting it away. Playing on sheep-grazed land or in clearings, the original implements may have been a matted lump of sheep’s wool (or even a stone or a small lump of wood) as the ball; a stick or a crook or another farm tool as the bat; and a stool or a tree stump or a gate (e.g., a wicket gate) as the wicket.
 

GROWTH OF INTERNATIONAL CRICKET

Cricket was introduced to various colonies around the world. The Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) was founded in 1909 with England, Australia and South Africa as the founding members. The ICC included the Marylebone Cricket club, the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket, and the South African Cricket Association as its original associations .The conference aimed to regulate international cricket among three nations, which were considered to be of equal status at the time.
 
 In 1926, both New Zealand and the West Indies were admitted as members, allowing them to play Test cricket against the other sides. However, at this time in the West Indies, cricket was primarily dominated by the white population. Originally, the ICC was not interested in broadening the international popularity of cricket. The organization was reluctant to invite non-commonwealth nations to play. New Zealand was restricted to play three-day test matches. New Zealand and India both became Test playing nations before World War II and Pakistan joined soon afterwards in 1952.
 
At the initial suggestion of Pakistan, the ICC was expanded to include non-Test playing countries from 1965, with Associate members being admitted. At the same time the organisation changed its name to the International Cricket Conference.The first limited-overs World Cups were played during the 1970s and Sri Lanka became the first Associate member to be raised to Test playing status in 1982.Because the ICC was predominantly a Western organization, the founding countries decided who was allowed to join the conference or engage in test cricket.There was no desire or attempt to create a set of Associate nations that would play in Test status, which is why countries such as Sri Lanka were not permitted to partake until the 1980s.
 
The international game continued to grow with the introduction of Affiliate Member status in 1984, a level of membership designed for sides with less history of playing cricket. In 1989 the ICC renamed itself the International Cricket Council.Zimbabwe became Full Members in 1992 and Bangladesh in 2000 before Afghanistan and Ireland were both admitted as Test sides in 2018, bringing the number of full members of the ICC to 12.
 

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN CRICKET TEAM

The Indian cricket team made its Test cricket debut in 1932 and has since advanced to be among the top four test teams in the (ICC rankings) in each of 2005 to 2008. The team won the ODI Cricket World Cup in 1983 and 2011. In other major International victories, Team India won the Twenty20 World Cup in 2007 and ICC Champions Trophy in 2002 and 2013.
 
Cricket was introduced to the Indian subcontinent by European merchant sailors in the 18th century, and the first cricket club was established in 1792. India’s national cricket team did not play its first Test match until 25 June 1932 at Lord’s, becoming the sixth team to be granted Test cricket status. From 1932 India had to wait until 1952, almost 20 years for its first Test victory. In its first fifty years of international cricket, India was one of the weaker teams, winning only 35 of the first 196 Test matches it played. The team, however, gained strength in the 1970s with the emergence of players such as Gavaskar, Viswanath, Kapil Dev, and the Indian spin quartet.
 
India won its first World Cup in 1983, under the captaincy of Kapil Dev.The ’80s and ’90s also saw the debut of Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid, Laxman and Kumble, considered to be among the greatest Indian players.
 
Ganguly’s, captaincy is considered to be the turning point of Indian cricket as it saw great success and became one of the dominant side of the sport, followed by the superb captaincy of MS Dhoni under whom India won its second World Cup in 2011, the inaugural T20 World Cup in 2007,and Champions Trophy in 2013. Currently, Rohit Sharma is the captain of all 3 formats – Test, ODI and T20I teams.
 
 
HISTORY OF CRICKET

 

INTERNATIONAL TOURNAMENTS

Since advancing to full Test Status and the creation of more and more international cricket tournaments, India has slowly become involved in a number of Cricketing tournament’s including the Cricket World Cup, ICC Champions Trophy and Asia Cup. India’s first two Cricket World Cups were largely failures, and the team failed  to progress beyond the first round. But India upset the West Indies in the final of the 1983 Cricket World Cup to claim the Prudential Cricket World Cup for the first time, captained by Kapil Dev. India and the West Indies had cruised through the preliminary rounds in Group B, while England and Pakistan emerged the victors from Group A. Most considered India to be the underdogs in the group stages, and their win against West Indies was categorized as similar to Zimbabwe’s win over Australia in the same World Cup. They were, in fact, quoted as having odds of 66 to 1 before the beginning of the tournament.
 
India’s performance in the remaining world cups has been considerably consistent. In the 1987 Cricket World Cup, the team advanced to the semi-finals as favourites, they did the same in 1996, both times they suffered upset defeats in the semi-finals. India was less strong in the 1999 Cricket World Cup, and did not make it past the Super Six section. However they impressed all in the 2003 Cup, only losing two games (both against reigning champions Australia) and advancing to the finals before taking a loss.
 
In the year after their World Cup victory, (1984) India continued its new-found dominance over One Day Cricket with a comprehensive win over arch-rivals Pakistan in the final. They went on to secure more victories over their Asian rivals, winning the 1984 Asia Cup with a victory over Sri Lanka in the finals. It won its third consecutive Asia Cup with a victory over Sri Lanka in 1990. It continued its strong streak in 1995, again beating Sri Lanka in the final. However, in 1997, a confident Sri Lanka riding on their first-ever World Cup victory swept past a weaker Indian side, breaking the 4-tournament winning streak. 
 
 
 
 
 

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