Cricket

Cricket was a bat and ball game. Though primarily associated with Britain and her former colonies, (AUDIO: The Roof of the World) cricket became an Olympic sport by at least 2060. (AUDIO: Nekromanteia)

The Doctor had a long relationship with the game. In his first incarnation, he claimed not to know the sport at all when he landed the TARDIS in the middle of an Australia/England match, (TV: "Volcano") but in later incarnations, he seemed to know the game well. (TV: The Ribos Operation, The Horns of Nimon, Black Orchid; COMIC: The Tides of Time, AUDIO: Autumn) Indeed, the Doctor's fifth self was particularly keen on the sport, sometimes playing it for months on end. (AUDIO: Autumn, PROSE: Happy Endings) In that life, he was even heard to call it "the greatest game in the universe". (AUDIO: Phantasmagoria) Though his sixth and seventh incarnations were not so keen on the sport, they still exhibited a knowledgeable appreciation of it. (AUDIO: The Fourth Wall, PROSE: Human Nature, Happy Endings) The Tenth Doctor, even when chameleon arched into the human John Smith, seemed to possess "muscle memory" of how to bowl exceptionally well. (TV: Human Nature)

Description
Cricket was played using a flat-faced bat and specially designed cricket balls on a pitch — itself situated on a larger "ground" or "field" delimited by a boundary line. The offensive object of the game was for the batsmen to score as many runs as possible. The defensive object was to get the batsmen out, either by successful bowling or by running the batsmen out. (PROSE: Happy Endings, TV: Black Orchid)

The Doctor and cricket
The Doctor appreciated the game in many of his incarnations, but it was his fifth self that seemed the keenest on the game. Not only did the Fifth Doctor regularly wear an outfit that approximated cricket whites, but he took every opportunity to play it, (TV: Black Orchid, AUDIO: Autumn, PROSE: Goth Opera) teach his companions its rules (AUDIO: Phantasmagoria) and attend famous matches. (AUDIO: The Roof of the World, Nekromanteia, PROSE: Graham Dilley Saves the World)

The Doctor sometimes spent long periods of time playing the game. The Fifth Doctor, for instance, spent one whole summer with the local team at Cheldon Bonniface (PROSE: Happy Endings) and at least one full season with the Stockbridge Cricket Club. (AUDIO: Autumn) He had probably also intended to spend a similarly long period playing cricket in the Eye of Orion, but Borusa's plan to pluck the Doctor's past selves from the time stream intervened. (TV: The Five Doctors, PROSE: The Eight Doctors)

The Doctor's ability to play the game varied depending upon incarnation. While his fifth incarnation was evidently an excellent player who was an asset to every side he joined, (TV: Black Orchid, AUDIO: Autumn) his seventh incarnation once flatly claimed that he needed to learn the game because he was no longer the same man. Nevertheless, he seemed to retain a knowledge of the strategy behind the game, as he once cunningly called for a batsman on his team to deliberately throw a full toss in order to bring the match to a dramatic conclusion. (PROSE: Happy Endings)

The First Doctor momentarily materialised the TARDIS on the pitch at Lord's Cricket Ground during the middle of a match between England and Australia in the mid-1960s. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

The Fifth Doctor materialised the TARDIS in Calcutta, British India on 31 December 1926 with the intention of taking his companions Nyssa, Tegan Jovanka and Turlough to the second Unofficial Test match between All India and Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which was played in the city on that day. The MCC won the match by four wickets. The Doctor considered it to be one of the best cricket matches of all time. (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)

Regardless of the Seventh Doctor's protestations, there was some evidence that the Doctor retained some instinctual ability to play across incarnations. Even though he had used the Chameleon Arch to turn himself into a human, the Tenth Doctor, as John Smith, expertly bowled a cricket ball in a complicated way that saved the life of a baby and its mother. (TV: Human Nature)

Companions and cricket
The Doctor's companions were almost universally unimpressed with the game and resisted the Doctor's attempts at proselytisation. (AUDIO: Phantasmagoria, The Roof of the World) Indeed, when Roz innocently asked the Seventh Doctor the question, "What's cricket?", Bernice Summerfield immediately interjected, "I think that's in the top ten of the most dangerous questions in the universe, right up there with 'Excuse me, Mr Dalek, what does that stick do?'" (PROSE: Happy Endings)

The game had rubbed off enough on Turlough that he once felt the need to explain to Tegan what the term "hit for six" meant. Annoyed by his assumption that she was cricket-ignorant, she pointedly reminded him that she was Australian, and therefore well versed in the game. She went on to note that Australia beat England every time the two sides met. (COMIC: The Forgotten)

Nevertheless, at least one companion — Ian Chesterton — was a positive fan. He listed being able to take in a cricket match as one of the reasons he wanted to take a gamble with the Dalek time machine and try to return to 1960s London. (TV: "The Planet of Decision") Another — Harry Sullivan — may have possessed genuine skill as a bowler, since he seemed confident in his abilities to use a cricket ball to deactivate a defensive robot on Space Station Nerva. (TV: The Ark in Space)

Behind the scenes

 * Cricket was partially responsible for the first broadcasting delay in Doctor Who history. "Hidden Danger", the third episode of The Sensorites, was bumped from the 4 July 1964 schedule because of an overrunning Australia / England test at and a long tennis match at.
 * Although cricket has only featured at length in one televised story — Black Orchid — it has been given much greater coverage in prose, audio and comic stories. Most, though not all, have featured the Fifth Doctor, and most, though not all, have been written by Paul Cornell.