History of Cricket

Cricket at the highest level has developed into a fully professional international sport from which leading players can earn a large income. However professionalism has a long history in English cricket. The first professionals had appeared by the first half of the eighteenth century, when heavy gambling on the game encouraged wealthy patrons to draft the best players into their teams. They would often offer these players full-time employment as gardeners or gamekeepers on their estates. In the second half of the century, the famous Hambledon Club paid its players match fees.

In the middle of the nineteenth century William Clarke's All-England Eleven was a highly successful all-professional venture which did much to popularise the game. The earliest overseas tours were also all-professional affairs.

In the early 21st century cricket is as lucrative as some other sports, and domestic cricketers typically earn several times the average salary in their country. Regular members of the English cricket team earn several hundred thousand pounds a year. However, the highest paid cricketers in the world are the star members of the Indian cricket team or the Australian cricket team who make most of their income from endorsement contracts. Cricket is the main sport in India, and the players are front rank celebrities, especially Sachin Tendulkar, who is one of the world's highest paid sportsmen.

Amateurism in cricket

The amateur was, by definition, not a professional and the dictum of the amateur-dominated Marylebone Cricket Club was that "a gentleman ought not to make any profit from playing cricket". In theory, the amateur received expenses for playing cricket, whereas the professional was paid a wage or fee for playing. In fact, many leading amateurs were themselves "well paid" for playing and it is often supposed that the greatest amateur cricketer of them all, W G Grace, made more money out of playing the game than any genuine professional. In fairness to Grace, he had to pay for a locum tenens to run his medical practice while he was playing cricket and he had a reputation for treating his poorer patients without charging a fee.

The real distinction between amateurs and professionals was one of social status: amateurs belonged to the upper and middle classes; professionals invariably came from the working class.The long-running Gentlemen v Players fixture, first arranged by Lord Frederick Beauclerk in 1806, was "the ultimate declaration of social realities" and its title states the difference precisely: the amateurs were all perceived to be "gentlemen", most of whom played primarily for enjoyment; the professionals were simply "paid players", most of whom took the game, as their living, very seriously indeed.

The sporting types among the well-to-do relished strong competition and welcomed the opportunity to play against the best performers, who tended to be the working class professionals. But, although the gentry were happy to play with and against the working class, they still sought to emphasise their superiority and, consequently, the word amateur took on a peculiar meaning of its own in cricket terms that was redolent of social status and implied respectability. The amateurs insisted upon separate dressing rooms and the use of "Mr" or a more aristocratic title on the scorecard.

On a personal level, amateurs would refer to their professional colleagues by surname only, while the professionals were required to called the amateurs "sir". This was not specific to cricket as it was the normal nomenclature used between middle and working class associates during the 19th century. The "Gentlemen and Players" distinction was a reflection of the higher status enjoyed by officers above other ranks in the British Army, or between employers and the workforce in industry. It therefore seemed natural to most English people of all classes to have a similar distinction in sport. The Gentlemen v Players matches were a highlight of the English cricket season, although the Players could usually put a much stronger side into the field than the Gentlemen.

This perception of amateurs as officers and gentlemen, and thereby leaders, meant that any team including an amateur would tend to appoint him as captain, even though some or all of the professional players might be more skilled technically. The idea was applied to Test cricket from 1888. Some English touring teams to Australia until then had been all-professional, but England did not appoint another professional captain until Len Hutton in 1952. It should be pointed out that many of the amateur captains (e.g., C B Fry) were unquestionably worth their place in the side in terms of technical ability. In the 1930s, Walter Hammond switched from professional to amateur so that he could captain his country.

The abolition of amateur status in 1962 was partly the result of long-established disillusionment with a hypocrisy that has been termed "shamateurism". For example, some amateur players were given a largely nominal job as "club secretary" and there were sometimes allegations that a few were surreptitiously paid bonuses over and above the bona fide travelling and hotel expenses that they were entitled to claim. The underlying reason for the abolition was the tide of social change in the wake of the Second World War with the growth of both a more egalitarian society in general and a demand for dedicated professionalism in sports such as cricket and football that became increasingly conscious of their business obligations and the need to generate income through success on the field.

by Steve Dimitry's