Cricket has Laws, not rules - kept by one club at Lord's
A private London club has written and guarded the game's code since 1787.
Cricket is unusual in that its rulebook is formally called the Laws of Cricket - with a capital L - rather than the rules. And they are owned not by a government or a global federation but by a single private club: the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), based at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London.
MCC was founded in 1787, and the following year it issued its own code of Laws. It has been the custodian of those Laws ever since - writing, interpreting, and revising them.
The Laws are “applicable from the village green to the Test arena” - the same code governs a Sunday park match and a World Cup final.
For most of cricket’s history MCC effectively governed the sport worldwide. Today the International Cricket Council runs the international game, but MCC still keeps the Laws - a rare case of one members’ club holding the rulebook for a global sport.
Sources & references
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