THE CRICKETERS OF MY TIME
The game of cricket is thoroughly British. Its derivation is probably from the Saxon 'cpyce, a stick'. Strutt, however, in his Sports and Pastimes, states that he can find no record of the game, under its present appellation, 'beyond the commencement of the last century, where it occurs in one of the songs published by D'Urfey.'[1] The first four lines of 'Of a noble race was Shenkin', ran thus:—
Her was the prettiest fellow
At foot-ball or at cricket,
At hunting chase, or nimble race,
How featly her could prick it.
The same historian of our games doubts not that cricket derived its origin from the ancient game of club-ball, the patronymics of which being compounded of Welsh and Danish (clwppa and bol) do not warrant his conclusion, the Saxon being an elder occupant of our island. The circumstance, however, of there being no illustration extant—no missal, illuminated with a group engaged in this king of athletic games, as is the case with its plebeian brother, the club-ball; also, from its constitution, being of a more civil and complicated character—we may rationally infer that it is the offspring of a more polite, at all events, of a maturer age than its fellow. The game of club-ball appears to have been no other than the present well-known bat-and-ball, which, with similar laws and customs prescribed in the playing at it, was,
- ↑ Pills to purge Melancholy, 4th edit. 1719, vol. ii. p. 172.
