It is strange to think that the question when, where and by whom cricket was invented has never been satisfactorily settled. Indeed, this most national of English sports can claim no particular parentage; for, although the name did not come into general use before the seventeenth century, there can be little doubt that the game itself, in some crude form, was known to the Normans - if not to their Saxon predecessors. Russel, in his "History of Guildford," stated that cricket was played in the middle of the sixteenth century, but it is remarkable that none of the early poets, who drew their illustrations largely from current occupations and pastimes, makes any allusion to it. The word is not found in Shakespeare, Massenger, Shirley, Marlowe, Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher, while even in the schedule of sports drawn up by the authority of James I and addressed to the Prince of Wales (the "Basilicon Doron") it has no mention. Burton, in his "Anatomy," specifies the sporting recreations of his day, naming bowling and hurling with others; but cricket is absent. So far as is known, the first mention occurs in Sir Thomas Urquhart's translation of the works of Rabelais, published in London in 1653, where it is found enumerated as one of the games of Gargantua.
The Irish Times, May 9th, 1931