The Spin | How Great Britain claimed Olympic cricket glory in Paris 124 years ago

These are lean times for England’s male white-ball cricketers. Bundled out of last year’s ODI World Cup in humiliating style, thrashed by India in the T20 World Cup after scraping into the semi-finals: the team now led by Jos Buttler has suffered a dramatic decline since the glories of 2019 and 2022.

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

As the hype machine shifts into top gear for the Paris Olympics, cricket enthusiasts are already anticipating the sport’s return for the Los Angeles Games in four years’ time. Whoever makes the cut for Great Britain’s team will touch down in California as champions, aiming to defend a title won in Paris 128 years before. It is a fascinating and quirky tale.

For millennials and Gen Z-ers, the Somerset market town of Castle Cary is notable for having the closest train station to Glastonbury festival. The neighbouring village of Ditcheat is home to Paul Nicholls, 14-times Champion Trainer, but Castle Cary’s cricketing pedigree should not be overlooked.

The club was established in 1837, and in the 1890s an enterprising young character called 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.

Reputedly a somewhat limited batter, he was a highly competent and enthusiastic administrator, assembling a Devon & Somerset Wanderers side 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, a number of sporting events were included in the Paris Exposition of 1900 and came to be regarded as the 1900 Summer Olympics, although it was far from an Olympic Games in the modern sense.

Teams from Belgium and Holland were scheduled to take part in the cricket competition but withdrew, leaving France and Great Britain to contest a two-innings, two-day match at the Vélodrome de Vincennes (now Vélodrome Jacques Anquetil) in eastern Paris. Spectators, perhaps unsurprisingly, were scarce but “two dozen” gendarmes, ambitiously recruited to control the crowd, witnessed the encounter.

Although Britain’s engagement in the Boer War had made its citizens unpopular in France and beyond, it seems an agréable time was had by all in the buzzing city, likely because the hosts’ team mostly consisted of Britons living across the Channel. It is said those under-occupied gendarmes also joined the players in a few post-match refreshments.

Five of the 12-man amateur side that took on the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques – 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’s captain and opening batter, skippered Exeter CC at home. Four of the party were alumni of Blundell’s School in Tiverton.

It was not exactly an elite team: in keeping with amateur tours it was partly a case of who could afford the trip, fit it around work and square it with their families. The scorecard suggests the contest was won easily – Devon and Somerset Wanderers prevailing by 158 runs – although the final French wicket is said to have fallen just five minutes before the close.

Details are unknown beyond the score, but Beachcroft (23 and 54) and Cuming (38 and 18) prospered with the bat for Great Britain. Montagu Toller, meanwhile, harvested 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 side, the former having played with W.G. Grace in 1895.)

“A cricketer in France is a stranger in a strange land, looked upon 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 only played by a few devoted Englishmen, who manage to run a couple of clubs, gave us an excellent game, treated us royally, and might have beaten us with a little luck … Parisian cricket is not quite of the comic opera kind which one would expect.”

Adding to the match’s shambolic air, it was not contemporaneously considered an Olympic event: it wasn’t until 1912 that Great Britain’s triumph was upgraded and gold medals issued to the victors. In 2012, Castle Cary hosted a French Cricket Federation side as part of the club’s 175th anniversary celebrations.

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

Cricket’s Olympic return, meanwhile, has been mooted for many years: London 2012 was widely seen as a natural reintroduction point, while Twenty20 at Tokyo 2020 would have been undeniably neat.

“We believe we have invented a really exciting product and it’s the perfect format for the Olympics,” said Tim Lamb, then ECB chief executive, in 2004 of the nascent 20-over game. “Twenty20 has a growing following across the world which can only increase.” He cannot have known how right he was, or how much damage the new format would inflict on Test cricket.

Onwards to Los Angeles, then – somehow an even less appropriate venue than Paris – where organisers have proposed six-team men’s and women’s competitions, with the qualifying process still to be confirmed. (The IOC was contacted.) While it is difficult to envisage France qualifying to defend the silver medal, the country’s historic cricketing links are stronger than many believe.

In 1998 Sotheby’s sold a French and Latin manuscript dating from 1301, the Ghistelles Calendar, said to depict the first known picture of cricket. Two boys play with a bat and ball in a document referencing Saint-Omer, 25 miles south-east of Calais.

In four years’ time, British cricketers will fly to Los Angeles aiming to honour the memory of Donne and his wandering teammates by retaining the Olympic title. But might it be the French who can truly claim to have invented the game?