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BAILS HISTORY · THE 1700s

Cricket’s First Rules Weren’t Written for Sportsmanship

They were written by very rich men. With money on the match.

The gambler’s game

The gambler’s game. Bails tell how 1700s England’s aristocrats took up the folk game and started betting on it.

1700s England. The folk game has been discovered by the aristocracy — and they don’t just play it. They stake on it. Titled men raising private elevens, fortunes riding on village greens. Great matches played for as much as 1,000 guineas.

And when that much money rides on a game, the rules can’t live in anyone’s memory.

1727: the first written rules

1727: articles of agreement. Bails show two aristocrats drawing up written articles of agreement for their own matches in 1727.

By 1727, two aristocrats are drawing up written articles of agreement just to govern their own matches.

1744: not rules. Laws.

1744: the Laws of Cricket. Bails show the London cricket clubs writing down the earliest known code of the Laws of Cricket in 1744.

By 1744, the cricket clubs of London write the game down whole — the Laws of Cricket — in an era when one disputed rule could sink a bet. Cricket doesn’t call them rules to this day. It calls them Laws.

1777: the village that set the standard

1777: Hambledon. Bails tell how the Hambledon side beat All-England by an innings in 1777.

Then a village makes the game serious. Hambledon — a tiny Hampshire parish — builds the strongest cricketing force in England, and in 1777 beats an All-England side by an entire innings. For a generation, the centre of the cricket world is a hill and a pub.

1787: the gambler’s game gets a cathedral

1787: Lord’s and the MCC. Bails show Thomas Lord opening his private London ground in 1787, backed by aristocrats; within a year their club, the MCC, issued its own Laws.

And in 1787 the money builds a home. A group of aristocrats bankroll a professional bowler named Thomas Lord to open a private ground in London. His name sticks. Their club becomes the MCC — and within a year it’s rewriting the Laws.

The gambler’s game now has a cathedral and a lawkeeper.

Strip the romance and look at the machine: betting money wrote the Laws, village pride proved the standard, and a private club took custody of the whole game. That structure — laws, clubs, grounds — is still cricket’s skeleton today.

But everything so far happened in England…

Coming next: the first international. Bails tease part 2: cricket’s first international match, older than international football.

The first international cricket match? That happens somewhere nobody expects. And it’s older than international football itself.

Part 2 coming soon — the first international.

Sources