France's New Love for 'Criquet'

The French government is introducing the most English of sports into the school curriculum

LONDON—It's the quintessential English sport, often dismissed as a pastime for eccentrics with its origins dating back centuries, but now cricket is being taken up by one of the most unlikely nations of all: France.
Children across the country are slowly taking up the sport thanks to a government pilot project aiming to introduce the sport to around 200 schools over the next eight years.
According to figures released by the International Cricket Council, there are just 69 cricket clubs in France. Trivial compared to the 5,000 in England and Wales, but half of those playing the game in the nation of football and rugby are French, rather than expatriates or the children of immigrants from traditional cricketing countries such as Australia and England, and that number is growing.

Christopher Bartlett

Immigrants and expatriates like Rory Gribell, an Englishman seen playing for France, above, will be joined by more French players if new plans succeed.

France Cricket, the sport's ruling body in the country, says there are only 850 registered players, but the lack of numbers has not prevented some success. France won the ICC's under-17 championships in Corfu in 2001 and the nation is also the reigning Olympic silver medal holder in cricket—though the sport was last played at the Games in 1900, and the country currently ranks a lowly 49th in the world rankings.
There have even been suggestions that cricket's roots may lie in France. The game's origins remain a mystery—it is believed that a primitive form of the sport was being played in England in medieval times—but the name may have originated in France. According to the ICC, records in the French national archive show "criquet" was being played in the north of the country in 1478 with an incident in one match leading to the death of a batsman.
Centuries later, a planned tour by the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1789 had to be cancelled due to the small matter of a revolution, while a team of Parisians later toured Nottinghamshire in 1899.
Over a century on, the French sporting authorities are now hoping a boost in funding could improve the country's performance. Following the ICC's sale of its broadcast and sponsorship rights for $1.5 billion France received around $300,000 to help promote the game in the country.
"Thanks to the extra funding, [France Cricket] is looking to establish cricket as a main sport in the country," said Richard Holdsworth, regional development manager for Europe at the ICC in London. "They are trying to increase the participation three or four times."
Mr. Holdsworth said the push to increase the sport's popularity in France was part of a bigger strategy. "We launched 13 years ago a development program to bring awareness to places where there is no culture of playing cricket," he said.
"One of the biggest challenges is that people don't understand the game with 42 different laws and a lot within that," he said, adding that some in France see cricket as completely alien to their own culture. "France is also a tough market to penetrate with cricket still being perceived as a very gentleman's game. But cucumber sandwiches and tea [traditionally served at cricket clubs in England] are long gone. We have a massive product to sell across the world."
There are now more popular formats of cricket designed to make the game faster, simpler and more appealing to wider audiences. One of cricket's most recent successful variations is Twenty20, a shortened version of the sport usually completed in about three hours. And cricket is now played well beyond the borders of the major cricketing nations with the ICC boasting 105 members from Australia to Peru.
David Bordes, a coach for the national under-17 and under-19 teams, points out that by introducing cricket to people at an early age the potential for growing interest is huge. As an adviser for the French Sports Ministry, Mr. Bordes has been overseeing a pilot project designed to teach children how to play cricket at schools in central France as part of their school curriculum.
"We are training new coaches in areas where there are no expat English communities. If this project goes well we would expect to have it in around 200 schools at a national level in eight years," he said.
Admittedly, the take up will be slow. "This program will either take about 10 years to gain track or we need a miracle almost to get a lot of places interested at once," said Tony Banton, manager of France Cricket. "It is going to be hard work and the progression will be slow."
Some lovers of the game still struggle to explain to people in France what cricket is all about. "Most French wouldn't even know that cricket is even played in their country," explained Christopher Bartlett, head coach of the under-17s. "It is perceived as a very English thing and some even confuse it with croquet or even polo."
There are some skeptics too. Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at London's City University and a former consultant on the establishment of the Indian Premier League, said: "It makes sense for Commonwealth countries to want to beat England at their own game, but why would any self-respecting French want to learn cricket? That would be the ultimate collapse of the French, who have a very strong sense of national identity."
Despite skepticism, young players in France are simply enjoying the game. Waseem Bhatti, a 31-year-old Pakistani cricketer who has been living in France since 2000, said he had seen the rising popularity of the sport among French teenagers. "Young boys are more and more interested in the game. They want to know the rules and they are very crazy about putting the cricket kit on," says France's senior national captain.
And following the poor performance by the French national football team at the World Cup, learning a new sport might not be such a bad idea.