The History of the Game

A set of written Laws dates to 1744, drawn up by members of a London club and later revised repeatedly as the game changed.

Source: MCC · recall

The MCC, founded at Lord's in 1787, became the Laws' custodian the following year, a role it has kept even as the ICC took over the sport's global governance.

Source: MCC · recall

Governance of the international game belongs to the ICC, but the MCC has kept the separate, older role of custodian and editor of the Laws themselves.

Source: MCC, ICC · applied

A court case from Guildford in 1598 mentions a game called creckett being played decades earlier, among the earliest clear references to the sport.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Bowling started strictly underarm; round-arm deliveries were gradually tolerated and then legalised, before overarm bowling was finally permitted in 1864.

Source: MCC · applied

1864 is the year the Laws finally allowed a bowler to raise the arm above the shoulder, ending decades of dispute over round-arm bowling.

Source: MCC · recall

The Laws have been repeatedly rewritten as the game evolved, and the bowling action is one of the clearest examples of a rule that looked completely different two centuries ago.

Source: MCC · applied

Lord's has been the MCC's home since the club's founding and remains closely tied to the game's traditions and laws, even hosting a neutral World Test Championship final.

Source: MCC · recall

Before 1744 the game was governed by local custom and whatever the two sides agreed, which is exactly the gap that a written, shared set of Laws was created to close.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

The ICC runs the international game, competitions and playing conditions, while the older MCC kept the separate task of writing and updating the Laws themselves.

Source: ICC · recall

Australia beat England by 45 runs at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in March 1877, a match only later recognised as the first Test.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Australia's 45-run win in the inaugural Test was an early sign that the young colonial side could match England, setting up a rivalry still contested today.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

The label Test match was applied to the fixture only in retrospect, once a recognised sequence of England-Australia matches had built up; it was not announced as historic beforehand.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

After Australia beat England at The Oval in 1882, a newspaper joked that English cricket had died and its ashes would be taken to Australia, giving the rivalry its name.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

The original terracotta urn is a fixed museum piece at Lord's; the winning side is presented with a replica or an equivalent trophy rather than the urn itself changing hands.

Source: MCC · applied

Ivo Bligh vowed to bring back the ashes on England's next tour, a phrase that helped cement the rivalry's enduring name.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

The Ashes predates the ICC's global events by decades and remains a bilateral rivalry between exactly two boards, unlike a multi-team World Cup or Championship.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

Test cricket grew out of earlier England tours against Australian colonial and club opposition, before a national representative side and the Test format were formally established.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Two world wars and long stretches of professional and administrative change have not broken the Ashes' place as cricket's oldest continuous international rivalry.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

The Sporting Times ran the mock obituary in September 1882, days after Australia's win at The Oval, coining the phrase that stuck.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Bodyline used fast, rising deliveries aimed at the body with several fielders waiting on the leg side to catch the resulting defensive shots, a tactic built to counter Don Bradman.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Douglas Jardine devised and directed the Bodyline plan, while his fast bowler Harold Larwood carried it out on the field.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Formal protests from the Australian board over the physical danger to batters escalated into a row involving the two countries' governments, not just their cricket boards.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

A new restriction on leg-side fielders behind the popping crease followed Bodyline, making it far harder to repeat the tactic within the Laws.

Source: MCC · recall

It is the deliberate leg-side field designed to catch defensive fends off the body, not simply short bowling, that defined Bodyline and separates it from ordinary aggressive fast bowling.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

The Laws allow a small permitted degree of elbow extension; an action exceeding that tolerance during the delivery swing is reported as an illegal, or thrown, action.

Source: ICC playing conditions · recall

Muralitharan was called for throwing by umpire Darrell Hair in a 1995 Test, sparking years of biomechanical study that eventually shaped today's tolerance rule.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Rather than a strict zero-tolerance standard nobody could meet under high-speed camera analysis, the ICC set a permitted tolerance, since even actions once assumed clean showed some natural extension.

Source: ICC · applied

Ian Meckiff was called for throwing during a 1963 Test against South Africa, one of the era's most public throwing controversies before the modern tolerance rule existed.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

In both cases a method of play provoked enough controversy that the Laws or playing conditions were rewritten afterward, a recurring way the sport's rules have evolved under pressure.

Source: MCC, ICC · applied

With the Test abandoned to rain, officials arranged a one-off limited-overs match as a consolation for the crowd, unintentionally creating the first ODI.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Kerry Packer set up World Series Cricket after his television network was refused rights to broadcast official Australian cricket, signing many leading international players.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Although WSC itself ended after a broadcast rights settlement, many of its presentational innovations reappeared in official ODI cricket, most visibly at the 1992 World Cup.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

The novelty fixture at Eden Park in February 2005, with players in retro kit, is recognised as the first Twenty20 international, two years before the format's first World Cup.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

The ECB launched a domestic Twenty20 competition among the counties in 2003, and only once it proved popular did the format spread to international cricket two years later.

Source: ECB · applied

Early ODIs looked much like a shortened Test match, white clothing and a red ball, until World Series Cricket's presentation was gradually absorbed into the official game.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

WSC demonstrated strong public appetite for shorter, better-presented cricket, a lesson the official game absorbed once peace was made with Packer's broadcasters.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

Australia chased down England's total to win the improvised fixture by five wickets, a modest start for a format that later grew into a global game.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Twenty20 went from a novelty international to a full global event in only two years, a far faster adoption than one-day cricket took after 1971.

Source: ICC · applied

WSC operated across the 1977-78 and 1978-79 Australian seasons before Packer's network won the broadcast rights it had originally been refused, ending the breakaway.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

International sporting boycotts against apartheid led cricket boards to stop playing South Africa from 1970, a ban that lasted more than twenty years.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

South Africa returned to international cricket in 1991 as apartheid ended, more than two decades after its last series before the ban.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

A one-off ODI against India in Kolkata in late 1991 served as a fast, high-profile symbol of return, ahead of South Africa's fuller return to Test cricket the following year.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · applied

South Africa played its first Test back at Bridgetown in 1992 against the West Indies, having last played a Test more than two decades earlier.

Source: ESPNcricinfo · recall

Politics, not results on the field, both removed and restored South Africa's international status, a reminder that a board's standing rests on more than its cricket.

Source: ICC · applied

Batters began padding away balls that would otherwise have hit the stumps, so an lbw law was introduced in the eighteenth century to close that loophole.

Source: MCC · recall

Until 1963 a no-ball was judged by where the back foot landed; the front-foot law was introduced to close loopholes bowlers had found in the older rule.

Source: MCC · recall

Television replays and ball-tracking were brought in as tools to support, not replace, on-field umpires, reducing the number of clearly wrong decisions that stood.

Source: ICC playing conditions · applied

The dismissal, once informally named after Indian bowler Vinoo Mankad, was reclassified from the Laws' unfair-play section into the ordinary run-out law in the 2017 rewrite.

Source: MCC · recall

From closing an eighteenth-century batting loophole to adopting ball-tracking technology, the Laws have never stopped being amended in response to how the game is actually played.

Source: MCC · applied