Hey, friends, this is Behram, and welcome to History and Sport: The Story of Cricket.

Friends, when you think of our fantastic country, India, which thoughts come to our mind? Somebody says India, and we think of the beautiful Taj Mahal, we think of the Father of our Nation, Bapu, Mahatma Gandhi, we think of the beautiful scenic beauty of India, the Himalayas, the south the Kanyakumari, the backwaters of Kerala. We think about mythology, the great gods, the great epics, the Mahabharat, the Ramayan.

My dear friends, we think of something amazing, we think of unity in diversity. Yes, so many cultures, so many religions, so many races, castes, creed, and guess what do we have, unity. If there is one thing, my friends, that unites the whole country, it is the wonderful game of cricket. And my dear friends, that’s what we are going to study about. Yes, my friends, I am going to take you through this amazing chapter, History and Sports: The Story of Cricket. Think about how do they feel to have the stumps knocked off, or to have the ball crossing the boundary line for a four, or maybe a huge, huge towering, six. Maybe just caught before it crosses the boundary line. If tens of millions of Indians today drop everything work, studies, everything, to watch the Indian team play a test match or a one day international, shouldn’t we as students of history explore how this game came to be so famous in India. How this game has captured the imagination of the Indian sub continent.

Yes, my friends, do you know this game began with three stumps. In fact as you can see it in that picture, only two sets of stumps. Look at the bat, my dear friends, you can see it highlighted for you. A curved bat almost like a hockey stick, do you know why? Because when this game was invented the bowlers would bowl underarm, can you see that my dear friends? Absolutely.

What is all this? This, my dear friends, is the oldest living bat in cricket history. Yes, my dear friends, it still exists.

So what are we going to do in this amazing chapter? We are going to look at the amazing history of cricket, how it evolved in England, how it was in sync with the training and athleticism of that time. From there how did it move to India. How did we Indians as a nation, adopt to this amazing game, and today how this game has transformed and the entire focus of this game has shifted from England and Australia to India and the sub continent and all the history that this game has been connected to.

My dear friends, stay tuned I will be back with this in the next module, History and Sport: The Story of Cricket.