How Britain claimed Olympic cricket glory in Paris 124 years ago | Cricket

TThese are lean times for England’s male white-ball cricketers. Humiliatedly eliminated from last year’s ODI World Cup, thrashed by India in the T20 World Cup after only just reaching the semi-finals, the team now led by Jos Buttler has suffered a dramatic decline since the glory years of 2019 and 2022.

There is more than a glimmer of hope to hold on to, however. Another prestigious international title remains in English, more precisely British, hands and will remain so until at least 2028.

As the hype machine ramps up for the Paris Olympics, cricket fans are already looking forward to the sport’s return to action at the Games in Los Angeles in four years’ time. Whoever makes the British team will land as champions in California, aiming to defend a title won in Paris 128 years earlier. It’s a fascinating and quirky story.

For millennials and Gen Zers, the Somerset market town of Castle Cary is known for being the closest train station to Glastonbury Festival. The neighbouring village of Ditcheat is home to 14-time Champion Trainer Paul Nicholls, but Castle Cary’s cricketing pedigree should not be overlooked.

The club was founded in 1837 and in the 1890s an enterprising young man named William Donne organised several ambitious tours. Donne, a keen rugby player with a physique to match, would become president of the Rugby Football Union in the mid-1920s.

Reportedly a somewhat limited batter, he was a highly competent and enthusiastic administrator, putting together a Devon & Somerset Wanderers team for trips to destinations such as the Lake District, the Channel Islands and the Netherlands. The adventures began with a tour to the Isle of Wight in 1894.

Six years later, the 1900 World's Fair in Paris hosted a series of sporting events. These events were considered the 1900 Summer Olympics, although they were far from Olympics in the modern sense of the word.

Teams from Belgium and the Netherlands were due to take part in the cricket competition but withdrew, leaving France and Great Britain to play a two-innings, two-day match at the Vlodrome de Vincennes (now Vlodrome Jacques Anquetil) in eastern Paris. Spectators were, perhaps unsurprisingly, sparse, with only two dozen gendarmeswho had been ambitiously recruited to control the crowd, witnessed the confrontation.

Although Britain's involvement in the Boer War had made its citizens unpopular in France and beyond, it seems that attractive Everyone had a great time in the bustling city, probably because the host team was made up mainly of Brits living across the Channel. It is said that they were understaffed gendarmes The players also took part in a number of refreshments after the match.

Five of the twelve amateurs who competed against the Union of French athletics sports associations sometimes called an All Paris team played for Castle Cary: Arthur Birkett, Alfred Bowerman, Harry Corner, Frederick Cuming and Donne. Charles Beachcroft, the touring team captain and opening batsman, was captain of Exeter CC at home. Four of the group were former pupils of Blundells School, Tiverton.

It was hardly an elite team: in keeping with amateur tours, it was partly a question of who could afford the trip, fit it in with work and fit it in with their families. The scorecard suggests the match was won comfortably – Devon and Somerset Wanderers won by 158 runs – although the final French wicket reportedly fell just five minutes before closing time.

Details are unknown beyond the score, but Beachcroft (23 and 54) and Cuming (38 and 18) flourished with the bat for Great Britain. Montagu Toller, meanwhile, picked seven French second-innings wickets for nine runs as the hosts were skittled for 26. (Toller and Bowerman were the two first-class cricketers in the team, the former having played with W. G. Grace in 1895.)

A cricketer in France is a stranger in a strange land, regarded with mingled awe and contempt by the average Frenchman, wrote one of the old Blundellians in the school magazine a few months later. The game is played only by a few dedicated Englishmen, who manage to run a few clubs, gave us an excellent game, treated us royally and with a bit of luck might have beaten us. Parisian cricket is not exactly the kind of comic opera you might expect.

The chaotic atmosphere of the match was further enhanced by the fact that it was not considered an Olympic event: it was not until 1912 that Britain's triumph was upgraded and gold medals were awarded to the winners. In 2012, Castle Cary hosted a team from the French Cricket Federation as part of the club's 175th anniversary celebrations.

The whereabouts of the Olympic medals are unknown, but they must surely be there, perhaps scattered across a few dusty attics in the southwest of England. Sports historian Keith Gregson, who has continued the research of the late journalist Richard Streeton, is about to publish an updated booklet on the story.

Meanwhile, there has been talk of cricket returning to the Olympics for years: London 2012 was widely seen as a natural reintroduction event, while Twenty20 in Tokyo 2020 would have been undeniably stellar.

We believe we have invented a really exciting product and it is the perfect format for the Olympics, said Tim Lamb, then CEO of the ECB, in 2004 of the emerging 20-over game. Twenty20 has a growing following around the world and that can only increase. He could not have known how right he was, or how much damage the new format would do to Test cricket.

On to Los Angeles, somehow even less suitable than Paris, where organizers have proposed a six-team competition for men and women. The qualification process has yet to be confirmed. (The IOC has been contacted.) While it’s hard to imagine France qualifying to defend its silver medal, the country’s historic cricket ties are stronger than many think.

In 1998 Sothebys sold a French and Latin manuscript from 1301, the Ghistelles calendarwhich is said to be the first known depiction of cricket. Two boys playing with a bat and ball in a document mentioning Saint-Omer, 25 miles south-east of Calais.

In four years, British cricketers will fly to Los Angeles to honour the memory of Donne and his travelling teammates by retaining the Olympic title. But can the French really claim to have invented the game?