A rather surprising email arrived at the Dennis Does Cricket Headquarters this week.
It was from the communications department of France Cricket, asking whether I could write something to help them grow awareness for the game in their country.
‘What the hell do I know about cricket, let alone when the French are involved?’
Anyhow, I agreed. Mainly because I needed some inspiration for this week’s article. For clarity, it wasn’t a paid gig. They were just hoping to have some more people become aware that cricket in France existed.
A noble cause.
France.
The country of Richie Benaud’s ancestors and the place where he spends half the year.
With this kind of tenuous link to cricket royalty, surely France must have an amazing cricket pedigree?
Let’s find out.
To kick off my French cricket education, I called my German friend Heinz to see if he knew anything?
Just google “Great French Cricket Victories”
Google responded with ‘Do you mean Great French Cricket Defeats?‘
This was going to be a hard slog.
What about Wikipedia?
Why a rooster for their logo?
I expected something traditionally French like two people kissing or a frog or a breadstick or Gerard Depardieu or the even bigger Andre the Giant. Andre was a massive cricket fan as this article attests to.
Is it just me, or does Andre look like Jermaine from Flight of the Concords?
He does, doesn’t he?
So, moving on, or as the French say it, ‘se déplaçant sur’, I delved further into the French Cricket Wiki page.
Wikipedia seem to suggest that the French team consists of only four players. Only four? What happened to the rest of them?
Did they get told their next match was against the Germans so they just quit?
Plausible?
The remaining four brave men don’t have what I would deem classically French sounding names.
Arun Ayyavooraju (c), Abdul Rehman Qureshi, Ramesh Sithambaranathan and Williamdeep Singh.
Maybe the French subscribe to the English theory of getting your players everywhere but from home? It appears that there are no South African’s, Irish, Zimbabwean’s or New Zealender’s though. But who can really tell from a name? Benaud is French after all.
As a kid, I knew that French cricket was a thing. In fact, we played a version of the game called, funnily enough, French cricket.
Your legs were your stumps, and you faced the bowler square on.
Just don’t get hit on the legs or get caught, That was about it.
Shivnarine Chanderpaul seems to want to bring this form of the game back.
So does Craig McMillan.
Chris Cairns was the non striker in that video. Not that I’m suggesting anything, but he probably paid McMillan to bat like that.
By the way, did you know that cricket was played in France as early as 1478?
Me neither. I just read it on the ICC website.
A batsman also died that year in France from a ‘pitch invasion’.
Let’s think about this for a second.
That guy who died had a bat in his hand when the pitch invasion occurred.
I don’t know about you, but where I come from, a cricket bat in your hand usually equates to survival in a game of pitch invasion roulette.
Perhaps he saw the marauding crowd coming and just lay his bat down.
Surrendered perhaps?
For completeness, I researched German cricket history to see if I could find any recorded occurrence of them Blitzkrieging a French cricket match in 1478.
I couldn’t.
Totally unrelated, did you know the term “French Cut” was introduced as a way to mock the French and their ability to play cricket? Well, that’s what Wiki says.
The English have since raised the bar, selecting Jade Dernbach whenever possible, for the sole purpose of mocking cricket as a whole.
Speaking of the English, they are the reigning Olympic Gold medalist in cricket.
Well, actually, there has only ever been one match of cricket at the Olympics.
The French lost it to the English in 1900.
They probably just surrendered.
I guess that makes the French the reigning Olympic Silver medalists?
To finish off your French cricket education, here are some cricket things in French.
Firstly, the rules:
…and here are some useful cricketing terms in French.
These will be useful when the Canadian Premier League kicks of in Quebec. Apparently they may speak French over there too. Who knew?
Batsman – Batteur
Bowler – Lanceur
LBW – Lambe devant guichet
Silly Mid Off – Milieu fou
Sticky Wicket – Wicket gluant
Maiden over – Fin de serie d’une jeune fille
My mother could have hit that with a stick of rhubarb – Ma mere pourrait avoir frappe avec un baton de rhubarbe
That’s just not cricket – Ce n’est pas le cricket
Howzat! – Howzat!
Viva La France Cricket!
Bet you that’s the last time they ask you to write about Cricket in France. Ok so now, how about a series of articles about Cricket in other non-traditional cricket playing countries? Like Norway and Switzerland and America just to name a few.
No. I don’t think they will ask me again. Shame. I enjoyed researching it 🙂
They are good guys at France Cricket. Make sure you follow them on twitter and Facebook.
I’ll have a think about what other nations could be worth writing about.
Mr. Dennis Freedman,
You must feel very smart by writing this article, which is the stupidest and poorest article I’ve ever read. I played cricket in France for nearly 10 years after having played in Sri Lanka. I must say although France doesn’t not have the same facilities as other countries like Sri Lanka or England, the French cricket federation and its people are doing a magnificent job trying to improve the popularity of the sport in the country. I a country where football is the most popular sport, it has achieved great results such as making PE teachers in primary school teach cricket.
Did you know that the french cricket team has played in several European tournaments. In these tournament, France played and even won against “bigger” cricketing nations like the Netherlands. I am not saying that the French cricket team is better than the Dutch cricket team. But let me remind you that, the Netherlands is a team that plays in the T20 world cups and that has won against England. Again, I’m not saying the French team is better than the English one.
Regarding the French vocabulary for cricket, it’s not the same as the one used in Quebec. We have our own set of words for that. Just like we have our own words for football. This is a way to make cricket for accessible to non-English speaking people. Nothing wrong with that, right?
You’re right about the names of the players. Most of the players and members of staff are descendants of immigrants from either the Indian subcontinent, England, the Caribbean islands and some, believe it or not, from Australia. These people have either been born or have been living most of their lives in France. My question is: why can’t they be considered as French?
What about you Mr. Freeman? Are you really Australian? I mean, have all your ancestors been born and lived in Australia? Not sure about…
These people feel and proud to be French, and especially they are proud to play for France. So what is different between Arun and François?
One last thing. This a free piece advice: don’t get your facts from Wikipedia. That’s very unprofessional. I don’t know about Australia, but in schools in France, we are taught not to rely on Wikipedia because they can be modified by anyone. But I’m sure you knew that.
So, instead of making fun of cricket in France by reading what’s on the Internet, how about you come to France and see for yourself.
Best. Comment. Ever.
Oh, and it’s Freedman. You also used Freeman. Hedging your bets?
You need the ‘D’ as in ‘Derrier’.
Satire, Calling himself “Ignorant” do you know what ignorant means, i looked it up on google ~ lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.
Sheesh,
Here is a photo my friends made of me putting on my thigh pad over my under amour , it made the rounds at our club, i had a good laugh with the rest of the guys, also one of me wearing a stupid cricket hat and my chest guard had fallen to cover my FAT gut, we called it the gut guard! …SATIRE ! Comedy !
I do so hope I can beat Sachin Khan’s comment as “Best. Comment. Ever.” (because putting full stops in the middle of a sentence is a sign of great intellectual capacity)
I did hesitate before deciding to write this. The sensible part of me said it wasn’t worth it, that all it would do would be to give you the satisfaction of a response and no doubt you’d enjoy a …. over getting another rise out of someone. But the less sensible part of me won out, the one which said “oh what the hell, he’s just a saddo who will get off on something else (and given his tendency for casual racism probably go out and do actual damage) if he didn’t get a response to his pathetic excuse for a blog”.
I am not surprised I have to say that you had no idea that cricket existed in France. In fact, there are 106 countries who are members of the ICC and even more than that in which cricket is played. But then someone who is seemingly incapable of finding the latest Wikipedia article on the French national cricket team (let me save you the trouble – here’s the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_national_cricket_team – you will find it lists a few more than 4 players) is scarcely going to know about that.
Much better I suppose then to sneer at the efforts of those volunteers (and small number of employees) who dedicate a huge chunk of their lives to promoting the sport that they love in their home country. Much better to reduce their daily struggling efforts to one big (and not at all tired) joke about the French surrendering. That way, you can avoid doing actual research and writing an actual article about the difficulties, struggles and successes which these countries deal with on a daily basis.
You can also avoid searching for the actual French translation of cricket terms, and instead just produce a lazy literal google translation, which anybody who has played the game in a francophone country could have told you was wrong (but then again asking a French speaking person would have meant a lot of effort…).
I have to say I find the casual racism in your article a bit more disturbing. Then again, I guess one can’t expect much less from a white Australian (see, I can do lazy generalisations as well). I am glad that you think you can judge somebody’s nationality by their name: this kind of reasoning means that Monty Panesar can’t be English, and of course Usman Khawaja and Fawed Ahmed are great Australian names (then again you do have history with Mr Ahmed). Mark Philipoussis is another great Aussie. What about Moises Henriques? Should I carry on?
The point more generally (which needs to be said, in case any idiot actually takes any notice of your moronic comment) is that in a world where immigration is as frequent as currently is the case, one cannot in any case judge somebody’s nationality purely on where they were born. Take Andy Strauss: born in South Africa, but moved to England when 6 years old. What nationality is he? Who are we to judge how he feels?
The irony (in case you hadn’t figured, which judging from the intelligence of your article may well be the case) being of course that Australia is, if you forget the Aborigines (which most Australians manage quite easily), basically a country of immigrants. Melbourne after all has the second largest Greek population amongst cities after Athens. But beyond that, apart from the aforementioned Aborigines (Never say you’re sorry John Howard…) every person in Australia is an immigrant of some description. Depending how far back you go.
Speaking as somebody with a particularly confused background, I am fiercely, fiercely proud to have represented France at cricket, and to continue to help cricket grow here.
So here’s the thing: there are a number of people involved in cricket around the world who give their life and soul to promoting the game in their home or adopted country. It could be that you thought this pathetic and sorry excuse for an article was just a laugh, a bit of fun, that people should lighten up. But the fact is, what you have written presents cricket in these countries as just a joke, and people who read it without any prior knowledge will go away with that impression; more importantly, it makes a mockery and is insulting towards those people who do work incredibly hard (and often at great personal expense) for cricket worldwide. For their sake, you should look over and review what you have written here, and maybe next time just take a few moments to stop and think before writing such gruff.
On the other hand if you really are a scumbag who can’t give a damn about anyone else, then by all means carry on as before.
Thanks for writing Michael.
You are correct. I know nothing about cricket in France. That is usually a good basis to write a satirical piece from. You know, stereotypes and bad jokes and things like that.
Why do you feel that people reading this are not intelligent enough to absorb it as satire when that is clearly what it is?
Perhaps the title of the piece “An IGNORANT Supposition on French Cricket” too subtle?. My bad.
The fact that this site is primarily bad satire and that it has pieces critical of most cricketing nations (primarily Australian and English) probably hasn’t given any clues either.
I find the reaction here and on this Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/97819152814/alarmist) quite alarmist to the point that I’m starting to wonder if that Facebook page is in fact bad satire too.
It’s like some people over there adhere to the Pakistani blasphemy laws.
‘Speak badly about my nation’s cricket and death be upon you’
People are reacting like someone has shown a red rag to a coq.
You may have also chosen to ignore the links to the France cricket webpage, it’s twitter account and its Facebook page at the bottom of the article. They are there to allow people to discover cricket in France in their own way.
Many people now know that French Cricket exists because of this piece. That is a good thing.
Oh, and here’s my piece on ‘racism’ where I talk about Aborigines and my Jewish, Polish, Romanian heritage and stuff like that.
https://dennisdoescricket.com/white-non-south-african-view-quotas/
On the point about the Facebook group, the major point of dismay was that France Cricket would have asked you to write a piece. France Cricket gets such little publicity, and has so few outside followers that unlike satire of England and Australia, satire of France Cricket could be misconstrued as meer mockery of botched amateur attempts at setting up the game.
I would take issue with:
” I know nothing about cricket in France. That is usually a good basis to write a satirical piece from. You know, stereotypes and bad jokes and things like that.” – I would argue this leads to a shallow, arrogant and lazy piece of satire, but obviously it is up to your readers to determine that.
and:
“Many people now know that French Cricket exists because of this piece. That is a good thing.” – many people have now read your (admittedly) unreasearched piece, and will have a caricatured view of cricket in France.
Hi Rory.
Can I suggest that satire is exactly that. From what I have seen in the last 2 days, I would suggest that ‘misconstruing’ my piece is most cases would be a deliberate choice to be made to score points in the FC political scene.
‘ shallow, arrogant and lazy piece of satire’….possibly. Everyone has their view. I welcome your feedback and appreciate that you took the time to write. However, a central joke of the piece was that I started from a place of no knowledge and used the most unreliable encyclopedia to gain knowledge.
Finally, as I stated above, you are ‘insulting’ (not the word I want to use…too strong… but I’m having a seniors moment) my readers to think that they take my piece as a reflection of the state of French Cricket.
Um, I loved it, i chuckled as well. I took what Dennis said and applied it to Cricket in the USA where i have lived for the last 24 years and played for the last 11 years. It’s funny, and he poked fun at himself as well , saying he was ignorant …I wonder does that make him racist of himself ? I’m sure if he called anyone else ignorant people would be yelling OFF WITH HIS HEAD! ( sorry just watched Alice in wonderland with my daughter , and wanted to use it . But i digress ) Just take it the way it was intended and move on. FIDO , Forget it , Drive on. NEXT. Dennis if you want to poke fun at me go right ahead.
Haha. Thanks Edward. I have posted my response to the French Mafia on their Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/97819152814/
They are good guys wanting the best for their country. That is all. Some of their passion has just been a little misplaced
This, from the France Cricket Facebook group, couldn’t be ignored.
Cricket has been played in France for at least 150 years. Before WW1 there was a Paris League with 20 clubs competing and internationals were played with other Continental countries, some resident expat XIs, other indigenous XIs and a French Association was formed then. the problem for all Continental countries playing cricket was that the ICC formed in 1912 demanded that member countries be part of the British Empire. As a result as with USA cricket declined.
The resurgence of cricket came about in the ’70s and ’80s with the large number of expats living in France mostly originally from UK but more recently and overwhelmingly in the big cities because of subcontinentals.
There are therefore two rather different traditions of receational cricket competing in France. One seekd to establish sports clubs with a dedicated ground and clubhouse and associated social activity as well as a committment to teach cricket to the indigenous French.
The other tradition seek to establish teams and competitions and play anywhere flat and resembling a sports field, arrive changed in cricket clothing and to disappear as soon as the match ends. This tradition is also primarily concerned with sustaining the game within its own minority ethnic group be the individuals immigrants or born and bred new French citizens. They have in general no interest in spreading the game beyond themselves and to the French youth.
These two traditional live together with difficulty.
Dennis you will find some stunningly located French cricket clubs if you do some research and quite some of the best places to enjoy a cricket tour as quite a few Australian touring teams have found.
The problem with satire is that it often does not across cultures well. Poms and Oz can also insult each other until the cows come home and still be great buddies. Some of our good cricket friends from the subcontinent do not see it that way.
Likewise those striving season after season to develop cricket in associate and affiliate cricket countries may grow a trifle tetchy at yet another blithering cricket ignoramus blurting out “Cor I never knew they played cricket in Scotland, Spain, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Norway,Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, New Caledonia, Afghanistan,Nigeria, Tonga,Japan,china Iran and so on.. and so on” Now tell us all when did Germany play MCC at Lord’s and why?
Thanks Michael. The only history I know about cricket is this:
https://dennisdoescricket.com/short-history-t20/