Origin

No one knows 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 Norman times by children living in the Weald, an area of dense woodlands and clearings in south-east England that lies across Kent and Sussex. It is generally believed that cricket survived as a children's game for many centuries before it was increasingly taken up by adults around the beginning of the 17th century. There is also a theory that it originated from ancient bat-and-ball games played in the Indian subcontinent, which were then transported to Europe via Persia and the near east by merchants, and eventually developed into the game of cricket in England. There is also speculation that Cricket began where shepards in the 1300's bowled balls of wool at gates called bails.