Cricket at the 1900 Summer Olympics

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A cricket tournament, played as part of the 1900 Summer Olympics, took place on 19–20 August at the Vélodrome de Vincennes. The only match of the tournament was played between teams representing Great Britain and France and was won by 158 runs by Great Britain. The team for the French club included at least 11 British nationals, two of whom were born in France, so it is considered to be a mixed team, though it is currently listed by the IOC as representing France.

Originally, teams representing Belgium, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands were scheduled to compete in a knockout tournament.

After Belgium and the Netherlands withdrew, this left Great Britain to play France in a one-off match. Neither team was nationally selected: the British side was a touring club, the Devon and Somerset Wanderers (alias *Devon County Wanderers*), while the French team, the French Athletic Club Union, comprised mainly British expatriates living in Paris.

The two-day game commenced on 19 August 1900. Great Britain batted first and scored 117, and bowled France out for 78. Great Britain then scored 145 for 5 in their second innings and declared, setting the hosts a target of 185 to win. The tourists bowled out France for 26 to win the match by 158 runs, a significant margin, but with only five minutes of the match remaining. The Great Britain team was awarded silver medals and the French team bronze medals, together with miniature statues of the Eiffel Tower.

This was the only Olympiad where cricket was part of the official programme. All events which were restricted to amateurs, open to all nations, open to all competitors, and without handicapping, are now regarded as Olympic events (except for ballooning). The IOC has never decided which events were "Olympic" and which were not.

## Background

Cricket had been scheduled as an event at the first modern Olympics, the 1896 Summer Olympics, being listed in the original programme for the Athens Games, but due to insufficient entries, the event was cancelled.

Four years later, at the Paris Games, there was also a shortage of entries: Belgium and the Netherlands withdrew from the cricket tournament. Their withdrawal left only Great Britain and the host nation, France, to participate.

The slightly haphazard nature of the cricket tournament was mirrored throughout the rest of the 1900 Olympics: events took place throughout a six-month period from May through October, and like the Games themselves, were often considered part of the Exposition Universelle, a world's fair held in Paris from 15 April until 12 November 1900.

## Team composition

Neither side was nationally selected, nor representative. Great Britain, or England as they were called in the advertising handbills, were represented by a touring club side, the Devon and Somerset Wanderers. The side, formed by William Donne in 1894 for a tour of the Isle of Wight, had completed five other tours before travelling to France. The Wanderers were primarily formed from players of Castle Cary Cricket Club, five of whom played in the match, and also included four former pupils of Blundell's School, a public school in Devon. The side was completed by a number of players from the surrounding areas who were able to get away from business and personal commitments for the two-week period of the tour. Writing in the Journal of Olympic History, Ian Buchanan describes that both sides "were made up of distinctly average club cricketers". Only two members of the Wanderers side, and none of the French side, played first-class cricket. Montagu Toller played six times for Somerset County Cricket Club, all in 1897, while Alfred Bowerman played for Somerset once in 1900, and again in 1905.

The French side was officially drawn from all the member clubs of the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques. Few of these clubs actually sported cricket teams, and so the eventual side was selected from just two clubs: the Union Club and the Standard Athletic Club. Both sides had strong English influences, and the majority of the team that competed for France in the Olympic match were British expatriates. The Standard Athletic Club had been formed ten years earlier by English workers who had moved to the country to help build the Eiffel Tower.

### Medalists

C. B. K. Beachcroft (captain)
Arthur Birkett
Alfred Bowerman
George Buckley
Francis Burchell
Frederick Christian
Harry Corner
Frederick Cuming
William Donne
Alfred Powlesland
John Symes
Montagu Toller
William Anderson
William Attrill
John Braid
W. Browning
Robert Horne
Timothée Jordan
Arthur MacEvoy
Douglas Robinson
H. F. Roques
Alfred Schneidau
Henry Terry
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