The social and economic history of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, shaped cricket and gave it its unique nature. One of the peculiarities of Test cricket is that a match can go on for five days and still end in a draw. No other modern sport takes even half as much time to complete. Another curious characteristic of cricket is that the length of the pitch is specified- 22 yards- but the size or shape of the ground is not. There is a historical reason behind both these oddities. Cricket’s connection with a rural past can be seen in the length of a Test match. Cricket was the earliest modern sport to be codified, which is another way of saying that cricket gave itself rules and regulations so that it could be played in a uniform and standardized way well before team games like soccer and hockey.

Originally, cricket matches had no time limit. The game went on for as long as it took to bowl out a side twice. The rhythms of the village life were slower and cricket’s rules were made before the Industrial Revolution. Modern factory worker meant that people were paid by the hour or the day or the week.

In the same way, cricket’s vagueness about the size of a cricket ground is a result of its village origins. Cricket was originally played on country commons, unfenced land that was public property. The size of commons varied from one village to another, so there were no designated boundaries or boundary hits.