The origins of cricket go back to the 16th century. Professor Richard Holt from De Montfort University.
Cricket began as far as we can tell in the 16th century as a farm game played by labourers and farmers around the home counties in Kent and Hampshire. But by the 18th century, cricket had really become a major spectator activity with the great landowners, the patrons coming in to support it, challenging each other, employing their own farm labourers to play for them and staking huge amounts of money on the result of the game. This came about because England had been transformed into an immensely rich society in the 17th and 18th century through trades, through the investment in land. There was a great, leisured aristocracy who were looking for entertainment, and sport-and-betting was one of the main forms of entertainment they found.
Is there a wane in which they were sort of assembling their own little local army, and instead of fighting the neighbouring landowner, playing cricket instead?
The landowning aristocracy in England in the 17th and 18th century were different from the European aristocracy who were still feudal and who were still highly militarised. The British aristocracy were demilitarised, tending to go on grand tours, enjoy entertainments of London and then develop their own sports teams of which cricket turned out to be the single, probably most important along with horse racing. They were the great patrons and in many ways the founders of modern British sport.
