(1) Cricket is a passion for peopte around the globe. It is played everywhere from test match arenas to village greens, tropical beaches, and dusty backlots. Cricket is the world’s second most popular spectator sport after soccer.

(2) The origin of cricket can be traced back to the Dark Ages. All research concedes that the game is derived from a very old, popular, and uncomplicated pastime by which one player served up an object, be it a small piece of wood or a ball, and another hit it with a suitably fashioned club. The game of cricket was first recorded in 16th-century England, and it was played in grammar schools, farming communities, and everywhere in between. But things really took off when 18th-century nobles realized it was a great sport.

(3) The oldest surviving set of cricket laws dates to 1744, which was printed on a handkerchief. Naturally, it’s now in the MCC Museum at Lord’s in London. The oldest permanent fixture is the annual Eton l/s Harrow match, played since 1805. A young Lord Byron turned out for Harrow in the first match, though history doesn’t record how poetic – or “mad, bad, and dangerous” – his bowling was.

(4) The first international match was held in 1877 when Australia beat England in Melbourne. The match was dubbed a ‘Test’, since the grueling nature of playing over five days was deemed the ultimate test for any side. However, it was Australia’s first win on the English soil – in 1882 at The Oval in London – that led to matches between the two nations being christened as the ‘Ashes’. Following the defeat, newspapers published an obituary mourning “the death of English cricket,” adding that “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia.”

(5) A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, usually 50. The Cricket World Cup is played in this format. The international one-day game is a late twentieth-century development. The first ODI was played on 5 January 1971 between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.