By Simon Hewitt

Le cricket has been played continuously in France for over 125 years. The word "cricket" is thought to derive from the old French "criquet", for a "post" or "wicket". A reference to a bat-and-ball game of "criquet" in the village of Liettres (Pas-de-Calais) occurs in a French manuscript of 1478. An 18th century print shows a game akin to cricket in progress at nearby St-Omer.

Horace Walpole mentioned seeing cricket in Paris in 1766. Legend has it that an M.C.C. team was due in Paris in 1789 for a game abandoned at the last-minute due to the revolution. The first documented match occurred in 1864 in the Bois de Boulogne between Paris C.C. (formed 1863) and the Warwickshire Knickerbockers - played, according to a report in L'Illustration, "before quite a large crowd of onlookers".

In 1865 Paris C.C. published a 24-page handbook in French explaining the game, and the Club President Drouyn de l'Huys presented a set of equipment (including silver-mounted stumps with ebony bails) to Prince Eugène, son of Emperor Napoleon III. The ten-year-old Prince took out (non-playing) membership the following season, when Napoleon III came to watch a game, promptly granting permission for the ground to be closed off and levelled.

In April 1867, M.C.C. and I Zingari played two day games against Paris at the Pelouse de Madrid in the Bois de Boulogne, each winning by an innings. The same year a "France XI" played "Prussia" at Homburg in Germany during a "Grand Cricket Week".

In his book on French Sport in 1889, A. de St Albin wrote that "Chantilly, Boulogne, Cannes, Nice and Lille are full of cricketers" - mainly English, staging their "cricket-meetings" every Sunday and Wednesday afternoon in Summer; the annual game between Paris and Chantilly rekindled the equivalent of "Oxford-Cambridge rivalry". But St-Albin also noted that there was a Latin American club in Paris, dominated by anglophile Peruvians, listing such cricketing immortals as Pedroso, Delfino, Cordova, Aguilera and Escandon (captain). Playing conditions were little better in Paris than in Lima. Whatever the improvements carried out under Napoleon III, the ground in the Bois de Boulogne still left much to be desired, and Parisian cricketers tear their hair out in desperation". They still do.

Another unlikely 19th century French patron of the game was impressionist painter Camille Pissarro who, after choosing a new house in L'Isle Adam, gleefully informed his son that "the garden is six or seven times bigger … We shall be able to play cricket". In Summer 1897 Pissarro made two paintings of cricket matches during his stay at Bedford Park in London.

France's oldest surviving cricket club, Standard Athletic, played their first match in April 1893 in the Paris suburb of Courbevoie. One of the club's earliest away games was against a team of English jockeys at Deauville. By the tum of the century a dozen clubs were taking part in a regional championship, including the famous Racing Club de France, the Union Sportive Parisienne, and an all-French team, Sporting Athlétique Garrénois. The 1899 fixture-card of Albion C.C., who played ai Joinville, lists away games at Standard, Chantilly, Compiègne and Boulogne-sur-Mer. In August 1899 a "United Paris XI" went on tour to Nottingham.

When the second modern Olympiad was held in Paris in 1900, cricket - for the only time - appeared on the programme. France lost the 12-a-side, two-innings final to "England" (a team of club players from Devon) by 158 runs at Vincennes Vélodrome on August 19/20 … and remain Olympic silver medal-holders to this day! One of the English players, referring to a French umpire, said "his decisions were fearfully and wonderfully made; he had no doubt been a witness in the Dreyfus case".

France beat Belgium in Brussels by 168 runs in 1906, and the two countries played annually until 1914. In June 1910, France took part in a triangular tournament with Holland and Belgium, defeating the Dutch by 63 runs. The first encounter between teams of native-born French and Belgians was held during this tournament, Belgium winning despite a fighting 55 by Fressart. Before World War I, regular club fixtures were held between the Racing Club of Brussels and the nomadic Standard Athletic, who had moved first to Issy-les-Moulineaux (playing on the Ile St-Germain on the Seine), then to Suresnes. In July 1912 the Stade Français toured England, playing Hampstead Nomads at Crouch End. The Sporting Life reported the game as "keen cricket" and said the French "fielded throughout with zest and vigour" (tying the Nomads down to 325-9).

French cricket continued to flourish after the war. A national association was formed in 1922, the year Standard settled at their current ground in Meudon. Their keenest inter-war rivals were the Stade Français, whose fixture-list continued to have an international flavour: Copenhagen played at their ground in the Parc de St-Cloud in 1936.

Many clubs folded after World War II and, for several decades, Standard were left in the company of two military teams: SHAPE, based at Roquencourt (near Versailles), and the Allied Forces, at Fontainebleau. General De Gaulle's decision to haul France out of NATO in 1966 spelt doom for these clubs.

Then, suddenly, everything changed in the 1980s, when cricket started to mushroom throughout France. Why? The development of artificial wickets; an influx of English and Asian immigrants; and greater awareness of cricket among young Frenchmen, brought up on school exchanges and glimpses of cricket on satellite and cable TV. The Association French Cricket was revived in 1987. The following year France became an Affiliate Member of the International Cricket Council. In 1989 the national side was re-formed and defeated a strong M.C.C. team, led by Roqer Knight, in a bicentennial re-run of the 1789 Game That Never Was -an astonishing performance that earned incredulous coverage in the British media. Also in 1989, Cricket merged with the existing French Baseball & Softball Federation (FFBSC) to earn official State recognition and an annual government subsidy. By 1990 national Championship, Cup and youth tournaments had been established. France became Associate Member of the ICC in 1998 and in 2005 became an autonomous Association but still linked to the FFBS.

In the nineties, France has hosted Essex, Hampshire, Kent county sides, playing at Thoiry and Meudon and Nottinghamshire on the grass pitch at Saumur. The Château de Thoiry club staged, and won, the first ever European Club Championship in 1992. In 1992 the French national team finished runners-up at the European Cricketer Cup in Worksop. France went one better in July 1993, winning the first European Cricket Federation Cup in Berlin, beating Germany by 4 wickets in the final.

There has also been the visit of Sir Colin Cowdrey's All Star XI, headed by Allan Lamb and Derek Underwood, to the Périgueux Festival, games against the Lords Taverners. France competes in the European Division 2, playing in Glasgow, Belfast and Antwerp (runners-up) and also played in the ICC championship in Toronto in 2001. France also participates in the annual indoor tournament at Le Touquet in March between France, Belgium and Kent, and the Folkstone Tournament in September.

Today there are around 50 clubs, and some 850 licensed players, in every corner of France, the majority however being in the Ile de France and mainly of ethnic origin.