Why eleven?

[Red]

Does anyone know why a cricket team has eleven players? Rather than ten? Or twelve?

 

[benchmark00]

Francois Crickét, the inventor of the game, had 11 children, and when trying to organise activities for them he decided to take a fence paling and get his children to stand around and bowl a ball at him while they fielded.

The equipment was primitive, but it gave berth to the game we know today.

 

[Red]

but it gave berth to the game we know today.

As in, gave it sufficient space to maneuver?

 

[benchmark00]

I believe it's an old old wooden ship.

 

[Top_Cat]

Baseball, being a froggy/Irish invention has 9, a reference to stage 9 of Le Tour which begins at Arc-et-Senans, a comatose Comtoise village. Soccer, codified by Cambridge toffs has 10. Cricket, with its massive inferiority complex, obviously needed one more. The response from baseball has been the Designated Hitter Rule giving them one more player in order to compete with soccer which, in the cases of the entire contents of South America, Africa, Europe, most of Asia, The Middle East and Caribbean countries not named Cuba or Dominica is widely regarded as a stunning success.

EDIT: Still unsure of the correct word, tbh.

 

[andyc]

Baseball, being a froggy/Irish invention has 9, a reference to stage 9 of Le Tour which begins at Arc-et-Senans, a comatose Comtoise village. Soccer, codified by Cambridge toffs has 10. Cricket, with its massive inferiority complex, obviously needed one more. The response from baseball has been the Designated Hitter Rule giving them one more player in order to compete with soccer which, in the cases of the entire contents of South America, Africa, Europe, most of Asia, The Middle East and Caribbean countries not named Cuba or Dominica is widely regarded as a stunning success.

EDIT: Still unsure of the correct word, tbh.

 

[Top_Cat]

Goalie isn't a real player.

 

[Red]

Serious question, can anyone tell me how long eleven has been the standard for a cricket team?

 

[benchmark00]

Serious question, can anyone tell me how long eleven has been the standard for a cricket team?

 

[bagapath]

i guess it is to do with the fact that in a team of 11, you have to dismiss 10 batters to oust the team. 10 wickets is a round figure to keep as the standard. i am guessing here

 

[cnerd123]

I like the idea that 11 was selected as it is the lowest prime number above 10.

Was football (soccer) already established as a proper sport when cricket was being established? If so, I'd guess they picked 11 men for cricket as they were already using 11 men for soccer (10 + a 'keeper).

 

[benchmark00]

Right, I may as well answer properly now.

I've done a bit of a research into this due to a couple of things I've done.

The earliest report on a game of cricket (1697) mentioned that the match was played with 11 players on each side. So the actual reason is lost because there are no reports about games before that.

Found it on Wiki:

The report was in the Foreign Post dated Wednesday, 7 July 1697 and describes a great match at cricket that was played the middle of last week in Sussex with eleven of a side and they played for fifty guineas apiece. The stakes on offer indicate the importance of the fixture and the fact that it was eleven-a-side suggests that two strong and well-balanced teams were assembled. No other details were given but the report is evidence to support the view that top-class cricket, in the form of "great matches" played for high stakes, was in vogue in the years following the Restoration in 1660.

1697 to 1725 English cricket seasons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So in summary, to the best of my research, no one knows.

 

[Prince EWS]

i guess it is to do with the fact that in a team of 11, you have to dismiss 10 batters to oust the team. 10 wickets is a round figure to keep as the standard. i am guessing here

I always assumed this too.

 

[Spikey]

they only had enough food to serve lunch to 22 people so they divided them in two

 

[Daemon]

I always assumed this too.

Same here.

Similarly, does soccer have 11 because they like having 10 players on the field, plus the keeper?

 

[uvelocity]

a cricket team has 12 players dumbarses

 

[stumpski]

Actually, in the 19th century, it often did. Even in the 1870s eleven hadn't been finally settled on - WG Grace made one of his biggest scores (a triple hundred I think) in a first-class, 12 a side game. And that's leaving aside all the matches played by touring sides against teams of fifteen, eighteen or twenty-two.

The 'super sub' has upset the stattos because it's no longer possible to work out how many matches a team has played by adding together the number of caps awarded and dividing by eleven.

 

[BoyBrumby]

I like the idea that 11 was selected as it is the lowest prime number above 10.

Was football (soccer) already established as a proper sport when cricket was being established? If so, I'd guess they picked 11 men for cricket as they were already using 11 men for soccer (10 + a 'keeper).

Football has been around since the middle ages in one form or another, but towns, colleges and universities all had their own versions. The sport wasn't codified into association football as we understand it (or the forerunner thereof) until 1863.

I'd guess cricket existed under agreed nationally recognised laws before, so football probably swiped circket's players per team.

 

[Stapel]

Not sure where I picked it up, but I'm pretty sure the number 11 is simply derived of the fact that you need 10 wickets to end an innings. I might have been John Mayor's (yup, the former British PM) book on the history of cricket. A book in which he describes his quest and concludes that the exact origins of cricket cannot be found 100% sure.

Organised cricket is 100 years older than organised football. I'm pretty sure English cricket teams simply started playing football in England's winters as an alternative for cricket.

 

[Cabinet96]

they only had enough food to serve lunch to 22 people so they divided them in two

Forgot the umpires, ****.