In 1622, when villagers in Boxgrove, England near the cathedral city of
Chichester were fined for playing the game of cricket on a Sunday, they
cried out: “It’s not cricket!” Our tale claims this is the first use of
the expression and, if these villagers did say it, it seems they were just
trying to get out of paying a fine. I can find no proof of the story
except in the source that relates it, and the earliest I can trace the
expression to is 1900, though it is foreshadowed in 1867. In any case,
over the years, perhaps after the villagers paid their fine, the phrase
it’s not cricket came to mean it’s unfair, it’s “not playing the game.”
Cricket itself is of unknown origin, possibly coming from the Old English
cric, “a staff,” for the bat used in the game. John Gunther in Inside
Europe (1943) writes of the British national game of cricket “and the
ritualistic attitude to fair play that it has proclaimed.” The
quintessentially British game goes back to at least the reign of Henry
VIII and it is an ancestor of baseball.