Jesus Christ was the first person to play cricket.
Jesus Christ was the first person to play cricket
The Son of God wielded a bat nearly 2,000 years before the game is thought to have been invented and walked on water to chase the ball, historians have claimed.
Details of Christ's cricketing exploits have been found in a previously unseen Gospel and the issue was discussed on the 'Rest Is History' podcast by historians Tom Holland, Dominic Sandbrook and Jon Hotten.
Discussing the first recorded cricket player, Holland said: "It's a big name. It's Jesus. Shall I tell you what Armenian professor Dr. Abraham Terian thinks it came from?
"He found in the manuscript of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, an 8th-century copy of a much earlier gospel which described the infancy of Jesus.
"And he is described as playing something faintly similar to cricket - people throwing balls and he's hitting it. And the catch is that Jesus, when he chases the ball, can run on to the sea."
Tagged in Tom Holland