NCERT Book Class 7 English The Story of Cricket

Before you read

Sport is an integral part of a healthy life. It is one way in which we amuse ourselves, compete with each other and stay fit. Among the various sports such as hockey, football and tennis, cricket appears to be the most appealing national entertainment today. How much do we really know about the game called ‘cricket’?

The Story of Cricket

Cricket grew out of the many stick-andball games played in England 500 years ago. The word ‘bat’ is an old English word that simply means stick or club. By the seventeenth century, cricket had evolved enough to be recognisable as a distinct game. Till the middle of the eighteenth century, bats were roughly the same shape as hockey sticks, curving outwards at the bottom. There was a simple reason for this: the ball was bowled underarm, along the ground and the curve at the end of the bat gave the batsman the best chance of making contact.

One of the peculiarities of cricket is that a Test match can go on for five days and still endin a draw. No other modern team sport takes even half as much time to complete. A football match is generally over in an hour-and-a-half. Even baseball completes nine innings in less than half the time that it takes to play a limited-overs match, the shortened version of modern cricket!

Another curious characteristic of cricket is that the length of the pitch is specified—22 yards— but the size or shape of the ground is not. Most other team sports such as hockey and football lay down the dimensions of the playing area. Cricket does not. Grounds can be oval like the Adelaide Oval or nearly circular, like Chepauk in Chennai. A six at the Melbourne Cricket Ground needs to clear much more ground than it does at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi.

There’s a historical reason behind both these oddities. Cricket was the earliest modern team sport to be codified. The first written ‘Laws of Cricket’ were drawn up in 1744. They stated, “the principals shall choose from amongst the gentlemen present two umpires who shall absolutely decide all disputes. The stumps must be 22 inches high and the bail across them six inches. The ball must be between five and six ounces, and the two sets of stumps 22 yards apart”. The world’s first cricket club was formed in Hambledon in the1760s and the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) was founded in 1787. During the 1760s and 1770s it became common to pitch the ball through the air rather than roll it along the ground. This change gave bowlers the options of length, deception through the air, plus increased pace. It also opened new possibilities for spin and swing. In response, batsmen had to master timing and shot selection. One immediate result was thereplacement of the curved bat with the straight one. The weight of the ball was limited to between 5½ to 5½ ounces, and the width of the bat tofour inches. In 1774, the first leg-before law was published. Also around this time, a third stump became common. By 1780, three days had become the length of a major match, and this year also saw the creation of the first six-seam cricket ball.

Working with the Text

1. Name some stick-and-ball games that you have witnessed or heard of.

2. The Parsis were the first Indian community to take to cricket. Why?

3. The rivalry between the Parsis and the Bombay Gymkhana had a happy ending for the former. What does ‘a happy ending’ refer to?

4. Do you think cricket owes its present popularity to television? Justify your answer.

5. Why has cricket a large viewership in India, not in China or Russia?

6. What do you understand by the game’s (cricket) ‘equipment’?

Please refer to attached file for NCERT Class 7 English The Story of Cricket