HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2023-10-05T11:08:29.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Elitism in cricket: a history
items: Cricket as a colonial weapon
items: Batting for the British Empire: how Victorian cricket was more than just a game
items: In pictures: The Ashes through history
items: 4 historical cricketing curiosities
items: Lord's cricket ground: the mecca of the sport
items: Cricket, curry and cups of tea: India's influence on Victorian Britain
items: From bats and brawls to new links between colonies: the origins of Australian cricket
items: Shakespeare’s world and cricket in South Africa
items: A history of British sport

Elitism in cricket: a history
type: item
date: 2022-01-26T12:04:22.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: 20th Century
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Cricket
subject: Sports enthusiast
description: Duncan Stone argues that classism and racism have held back England’s summer sport for decades
encoded: Duncan Stone talks to Spencer Mizen about cricket’s history of elitism – a story that, he contends, has long seen the rich and powerful dominate the sport’s evolution and image. Duncan Stone is the author of Different Class: The Untold Story of English Cricket (Repeater, 2022) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon Buy now on Waterstones How to download the HistoryExtra podcast Download as MP3

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Cricket as a colonial weapon
type: item
date: 2021-11-03T12:10:17.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Cricket
description: Dr Souvik Naha reveals how the Victorians used cricket to export “British virtues” across the empire
encoded: For 19th-century imperialists, cricket wasn’t just a game, it was a means of exporting “British virtues” across the empire. Dr Souvik Naha tells Spencer Mizen about the sport’s great “civilising mission”. Read more in our feature about how Victorian cricket was more than just a game How to download the HistoryExtra podcast Download as MP3

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Batting for the British Empire: how Victorian cricket was more than just a game
type: item
date: 2021-08-27T06:11:51.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Cricket
subject: The British Empire
description: For Victorian imperialists, cricket was more than just a game, it was a means of exporting English virtues across the globe. But how, asks Souvik Naha, did this great “civilising mission” go down with the colonised peoples?
encoded: Listen to this article: A strange letter was published in The Times on 25 June 1968. The writer, DM Brittain from Aberdeen, said: “Now I know that this country is finished. On Saturday, with Australia playing, I asked a London cabby to take me to Lord’s [cricket ground], and had to show him the way.” The letter summed up the growing anxiety about a rapidly changing world in which the British empire had lost its prestige, and people with little interest in cricket drove cabs in the capital city. If cricket was no longer central to British identity, Brittain reasoned, what hope was there for the future of the nation? Cricket has been a marker of English identity for two centuries. It is the “most exalted icon”, as one scholar has written, of “theme park heritage Englishness”. In order to be England’s national game, cricket had to be English in origin and character (though it may have evolved from games in France and the Netherlands). And when Englishmen travelled the world to forge an empire, they took their “national” game with them. It was the Victorians who wove a distinctive English imprint into cricket by trumpeting the virtues of fair play, equanimity and loyalty – all of which they hailed as the building blocks of British democracy and empire. The timeless, leisurely nature of cricket in the mid-19th century was imbued with the wistful imagery of a bucolic past set in contrast with the industrial present, rooting the sport strongly within English history and culture. And this was an ideal to which Victorians were introduced at the youngest of ages. The public school system mythologised the sport as the ultimate lesson in morals, justice, religion and life itself. By playing cricket, boys – and later girls, non-Christians, and colonial people – would become exemplary citizens of the British empire. “Give me a boy who is a cricketer and I can make something of him,” said George Ridding, headmaster of Winchester College. In the contest between bat and ball, social…

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In pictures: The Ashes through history
type: item
date: 2019-08-01T09:11:10.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Cricket
description: The term 'the Ashes' first originated in 1882 after England's cricket team lost to Australia at The Oval in London. Since then, the Test series has continued between the rival teams. We look back at some of the most memorable matches through history...
encoded: <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/ashes8001-be8a253.jpg" width="800" height="530" alt="BDW39T The Australian XI of 1882, the cricket team toured England and won the only test at the Oval, the start of the Ashes legend. Image shot 1882. Exact date unknown." title="The Australian XI of 1882, the cricket team toured England and won the only test at the Oval, the start of the Ashes legend. Image shot 1882. Exact date unknown." /> An 'obituary' in The Sporting Times on the 'death' of English cricket, which appeared after England lost the 1882 Test Match against Australia. The bales were burnt and the ashes placed in an urn to become 'The Ashes', for which the Australia and England cricket teams compete. The England team for the second Test of the 1899 Ashes series against Australia. The Australians won the match by 10 wickets. All the other four matches of the series were drawn. A print from The Book of Cricket, a Gallery of Famous Players, edited by CB Fry, George Newnes Ltd, London, c1899. Tibby Cotter of Australia bowling to Wilfred Rhodes of England in the second Ashes Test at Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia, 30 December 1911 to 3 January 1912. England won the match by eight wickets. (Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images) The English cricket team during a team photo at the start of their Ashes campaign, 1928. SMH SPORT Picture by HH FISHWICK. (Credit: Fairfax Media/Fairfax Media via Getty Images) Don Bradman of Australia in bat while wicketkeeper Godfrey Evans and Bill Edrich field for England during the first Ashes Test match at Trent Bridge in Nottingham, England, 1948. Australia won by eight wickets. (Credit: Allsport Hulton/Archive) 'The Ashes', a funeral trophy for which English and Australian cricket teams compete. It is kept in the Long Room of the pavilion at Lord's cricket ground in London. Picture dated 1951. (Credit: Central Press/Getty Images) Mr and Mrs O’Neill, Mr and Mrs Williams and Mr Deane wai…

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4 historical cricketing curiosities
type: item
date: 2019-07-15T10:15:35.000Z
subject: General Modern
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Cricket
description: Which player was 'kinapped' as he was about to open the batting at Lords? And which item of clothing was 'unsporting' when women began playing the game? We revisit an article from Oxford historian Dr Benjamin Mountford, who shares some historical cricketing curiosities...
encoded: Bodyline and 'kidnapping': it’s just not cricket! Cricket contests between England and Australia have resulted in a number of controversies, most notoriously when, during their 1932–33 tour to Australia, England deployed the infamous ‘bodyline’ technique to counter the batting of Donald Bradman. The tactic saw bowlers bowling the ball directly at the batsman's body. “When Douglas Jardine unleashed his hostile fast attack of Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, who bowled short on and outside the line of the leg stump, there was outrage… The cost to England's image was catastrophic,” says ESPN. One of the great controversies of the Victorian age was the ‘kidnapping’ of the Australian player Billy Midwinter by WG Grace. About to open the batting for Australia at Lords, Midwinter was bundled into a cab by Grace and taken to play for Gloucestershire at the Oval. When his Australian teammates hopped into their own cab and set off in pursuit, an unseemly argument took place outside the ground, with Grace branding the Australians “a nasty lot of sneaks”. After several heated letters had bounced back and forth, Grace eventually issued a written plea to “let bygones be bygones” and apologised for his “unparliamentarily language”. Read more about cricket history: Cricket, curry and cups of tea: India's influence on Victorian Britain From bats and brawls to new links between colonies: the origins of Australian cricket In pictures: the history of the Ashes The gentleman’s game? In Australia, as in England, cricket was often depicted as an exclusively male preserve during the 19th century. Yet by 1874, women in Australia had begun to play. The first match between Victoria and New South Wales took place in Sydney in 1890, and in 1891 Rosalie Dean made an impressive 195 and 104 in a match at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Early female players were advised to secure their hats tightly so that both hands would be free to take catches, while stopping the ball with one’s petticoats was considere…

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height: 530

Lord's cricket ground: the mecca of the sport
type: item
date: 2019-06-14T08:32:20.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Victorian
subject: Period
subject: Cricket
description: At Lord's, the host of the 2019 Cricket World Cup final, Spencer Mizen soaks up two centuries of history – Victorian grandeur, priceless art and stuffed sparrows to the fore – at cricket's most storied venue
encoded: When, on 14 July, the players walk out onto Lord’s’ impeccably manicured turf to contest the final of the 2019 World Cup – bringing the curtain down on a six-week extravaganza of towering sixes, toe-crunching yorkers and brilliant catches – cricket will feel very much like a game for the here and now. Yet of all the world’s leading sports, perhaps none is more in thrall to its past than England’s summer game, and nowhere is this more evident than at Lord’s. In fact, from the moment I arrived at cricket’s most storied venue – stopping to admire the Grace Gates, the cast-iron tribute to WG, one of the most famous of all Victorians – I could almost feel history hurtling towards me like a well-directed bouncer. And it’s a long history – one that stretches back to 1787 when Thomas Lord – the son of Yorkshire who gave the venue his name – secured a ground for the newly formed Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) to play on.Lord’s first forays into ground ownership were chequered: he moved the MCC out of its first home at Dorset Square after the area became a haunt of cutthroats; and was forced out of its second by the decision to carve the Regent’s Canal right through the ground. Even the move to the current site in St John’s Wood in 1814 almost ended badly, when Lord came close to selling the land to housing developers. Yet, once that fate was averted, the ground soon established itself as the epicentre of cricket. Rich Londoners were rapidly falling in love with the game, and the MCC – already established as the arbiter of cricket’s laws – was uniquely placed to exploit this passion. Cricket, curry and cups of tea From bats and brawls to new links between colonies: the origins of Australian cricket 10 things you didn’t know about London’s sporting history Since then, Lord’s has witnessed many of cricket’s landmark moments – the first Oxford versus Cambridge match in 1827, Don Bradman’s flawless 254 for Australia in 1930, the first World Cup final in 1975. Yet in terms of sheer…

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Cricket, curry and cups of tea: India's influence on Victorian Britain
type: item
date: 2017-10-14T11:49:42.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Cricket
subject: Life in Victorian Britain
description: As Queen Victoria's friendship with her Indian attendant is explored in the new film Victoria and Abdul, Shompa Lahiri examines how the queen helped popularise India's cultural influence on all areas of British society, from polo to pyjamas...
encoded: They cooked up Indian curries, played Indian sports, draped themselves in Indian textiles and even voted for Indian politicians. The Victorian era saw Britons falling in love with the culture of the subcontinent, and it seems that the people took their prompt from the very top. Queen Victoria herself declared a great interest in the empire’s largest possession and greatest trading partner, so helping to popularise Indian delicacies, fashion, jewellery and architecture. The genesis of this passion for India can be traced back to the 16th century, when British merchant adventurers began to import spices, dyes and, most importantly, textiles from India via newly discovered sea routes. From 1600, the East India Company controlled this trade, and from the 1750s the commercial interests of the company were consolidated into outright political and territorial domination. After a massive rebellion against foreign rule in 1857, the British government decided to place India under the direct control of the crown the following year. Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877. Victoria’s interest in India sprang, at least in part, from her Indian assistant Abdul Karim, who came to Britain in 1887 to serve the queen. He rose within Victoria’s affections, as well as in status to the title of ‘Munshi’ (teacher or clerk), teaching the queen Hindi and Urdu and advising on all matters concerning India. Karim was one of a steady stream of Indian migrants coming to Britain during the 19th century (estimates suggest more than 110,000), including domestics, maritime workers, petitioners, performers, royalty, social reformers, students and travellers. Concentrated in Britain’s port cities, especially London, Indians were visible in Britain’s streets, docks, buses, trains, Inns of Court, medical schools, universities, exhibitions and parliament. Britons were most attracted to those aspects of Indian culture that they could readily consume, such as food and textiles. But this rel…

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From bats and brawls to new links between colonies: the origins of Australian cricket
type: item
date: 2017-03-15T08:52:38.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Cricket
description: On the 140th anniversary of the first recognised cricket test match, played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground between Australia and England (and which Australia won by 45 runs), Oxford historian Dr Benjamin Mountford explores the roots of Australian cricket… This article was first published in August 2015
encoded: By December 1803 they were already at it. Just 15 years after the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay, and just 16 years after the first match had been played at Lord's in London, cricket had made its way to New South Wales. On 8 January 1804 the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Telegraph reported: The late intense weather has been very favourable to the amateurs of cricket who have scarce lost a day for the past month. The frequent immoderate heats might have been considered inimical to the amusement, but were productive of very opposite consequences. Cricket was the first team game to be successfully exported from England to Australia. In the distant penal colony of New South Wales, it was encouraged by colonial governors as a worthy entertainment. Importantly, it provided the new arrivals with a vital link to the world they had left behind. Thousands of miles from home, on a patch of land set aside for recreation (which after 1810 would be known as ‘Hyde Park’), Sydney's first cricketers set about recreating that most English of games in the “immoderate heat[s]” of the Australian sun. During its infancy, Australian cricket developed some distinctive characteristics, owing in part to the distance between the colony and England – the first cricket clubs struggled to import copies of the latest rules and equipment. As such, they made use of local timbers and leather and were late to adopt certain English innovations, such as the use of overarm bowling and the coin toss [to determine which team bats first]. Matches were well supported by both the respectable and incorrigible classes of Australian society. In the 19th century, cricket developed into one of the essential features of the Australian cultural landscape. By 1826 Sydney was home to a number of cricket clubs including the Currency, the Military and the Australian. During the 1820s, 30s and 40s, white colonisers took the game with them as they spread across Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia, Western …

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Shakespeare’s world and cricket in South Africa
type: item
date: 2016-04-21T15:00:09.000Z
subject: Elizabethan
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Cricket
description: Edward Wilson-Lee looks at how the playwright’s work became celebrated on a global scale, while Dean Allen recounts the story of a pioneering British cricket enthusiast who popularised the sport in 19th-century South Africa
encoded: As we reach the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Edward Wilson-Lee shows how the playwright became celebrated at a global level and, in particular, in the countries of East Africa. Meanwhile, historian Dean Allen recounts the story of pioneering British cricket enthusiast James Logan, who popularised the sport in 19th-century South Africa.

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A history of British sport
type: item
date: 2012-02-06T10:25:05.000Z
subject: 20th Century
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Cricket
subject: Cycling
subject: Football
subject: Rugby
description: On 6 May 1954, Roger Bannister broke the world mile record and the four-minute barrier at the Iffley Road Track in Oxford, completing the distance in 3 mins 59.4 seconds – a huge achievement for British sport. Here, Professor Tony Collins discusses ten locations linked to the development of sport in Britain over the past 200 years – from Much Wenlock to Stamford Bridge
encoded: This article was first published in the February 2012 issue of BBC History Magazine The British, it’s often said, have a particular genius for inventing sports and games. Considering how many of these sports and games turn out to have evolved elsewhere in the world too, this may or may not be true. However, we can be certain about one thing: the British invented modern sports in all their money-drenched and over-hyped glory. To put that another way, you can trace a direct line from Britons setting down recognised rules for horse racing, boxing and cricket through to football’s World Cup, the Indian Premier League and the modern Olympic Games. “Although most countries have variations of folk tradition sports, which can range from hitting a ball with a bat through to mob forms of football through to maypole dancing – traditions that are very rooted in rural, agricultural lifestyles – Britain was the first place to develop what we would see today as codified, organised and commercialised sports,” says Tony Collins of De Montfort University in Leicester. It’s a story that begins in earnest in the 18th century. “The reason why Britain developed these sports was it was the first nation to become an industrial, capitalist economy where people had disposable income,” comments Collins. “There was the wealth to generate both an interest in sports and also markets for sports.” From the off then, money was central to sport’s growth. It’s no coincidence that this was also an era when, especially in a south-east growing prosperous as the centre of empire, the theatre grew in popularity and newspapers began to flourish. Beginning with the aristocracy, Britons were discovering the joys of leisure time. This meant games played for high stakes and gambling. Cricket matches with prize money of 1,000 guineas weren’t unheard of. Predating today’s ‘in-game’ wagers, on-site bookies would even offer odds on individual batsman’s scores. If this doesn’t tally with the familiar idea of stolid…

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