Was Jesus Christ the first person to play cricket?

By Paul Mills via SWNS

Jesus Christ was the first person to play cricket - and used his walking-on-water skills to chase the ball, historians claim.

The son of God wielded a bat nearly 2,000 years before the game was thought to have been invented, a scientist said.

Details of The Second Coming's cricket playing days as a child were apparently found in a previously unseen Gospel.

The claims were made on the "Rest Is History" podcast featuring historians Tom Holland, Dominic Sandbrook and John Hotten.

Discussing who was the first recorded player, Holland told the podcast: ''Do you know who it was? 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 library of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem an eighth century copy of a much earlier gospel which described the infancy of Jesus.

''And in this gospel Jesus is described as playing something faintly similar to cricket, i.e people throwing balls and he's hitting it - and the catch is Jesus, when he chases the ball, can run onto the sea.''

The Gospel apparently translates as: "He would take the boys to the seashore and, carrying the playing ball and the club, he would go over the waves of the sea as though he was playing on a frozen surface, hitting the playing ball.

''And watching him, the boys would scream and say: 'Watch the child Jesus, what he does over the waves of the sea!' Many would gather there and, watching him, would be amazed.'"