history of cricket

No oneknows when or where cricket began but there is a body of evidence, much of it circumstantial, that strongly suggests the game was devised during saxon or normantimes by children living in the weald an area of dense woodlands and clearing in south east england that lies across Kent and susex.It is generally believed that cricket survived as a children gamefor many centuries before it was increasingly taken upby adults around the begining of the 17th century.There is also a theory that it originated from ancient bat and bal game playedin the indian subcontinent which were then transported to europe via persia andthe near east by merchant and eventualy developed into the game of cricket in england.

DERIVATION OF THE NAME:
A number of word are thought to be possible sources for the term cricket which could refer to the bat or the wicket .In old french the word criquet means a kind of club which probably give its name to croquet .some believe that cricket and and croquet have acommon originIn Flemish, krick(e) means a stick, and, in Old English, cricc or cryce means a crutch or staff (though the hard "k" sound suggests the North or Northeast midlands, rather than the Southeast, where cricket seems to have begun). The Isle of Man has a game called Cammag. It involves a stick (cammag) and a ball (crick) with anything between four and hundreds of players. The 'crick' in this instance may be derived from, though indirectly, Flemish.
Alternatively, the French criquet apparently comes from the Flemish word krickstoel, which is a long low stool on which one kneels in church which may appear similar to the long low wicket with two stumps used in early cricket, or the early stool in stoolball. The word stool is old [Sussex] dialect for a tree stump in a forest, but in stoolball it may well refer to the milking-stools which are believed to have been used as wickets in early times.
Stoolball is an ancient sport similar to cricket, still played in southern counties of England, especially Sussex, and is considered a precursor to cricket, rounders and baseball.
FIRST DEFINITE REFRENCE:
Despite many refrences the first definite refrences to the game is found in 1597 court case concerning dispute over a schools ownership of a plotof a land.A59 year old coroner John Derrick testified that he and his school friend had played kreckett on the site fifty years earlier.This school was the Royal Grammar School Guildford and Mr. Derrick account proves beyondreasonable doubt that thje game was bieng was played in surrey1550.
The first reference to it being played as an adult sport was in 1611, when two men in Sussex were prosecuted for playing cricket on Sunday instead of going to church. In the same year, a dictionary defines cricket as a boys' game and this suggests that adult participation was a recent development