Village cricket is a term, sometimes pejorative, given to the playing of cricket in rural villages in England. Many villages have their own teams that play at varying levels of the English cricket pyramid.
When organised cricket first began in the 17th century, matches were played between rival parishes or villages and this level of competition has endured. It contrasts with what may be termed representative cricket whereby a team includes players from more than one parish (e.g., a team that represents a county or a country).
Village cricket teams are often made up of local residents only, although some teams' first XI can include players with connections to minor counties cricket clubs and members of the academies of the county cricket club of the county in which the team lies.
In many non-professional cricket leagues, the adjective 'village' is a descriptor used humerously, self-deprecatingly, or, sometimes, pejoratively to convey a sense of amateurishness of some aspect of the team's (or an individual's) preparation, dress, conduct, or play.
Read more about Village Cricket: In Popular Media
Famous quotes containing the words village and/or cricket:
“Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homoeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)