While France has fallen for the charms of football and rugby despite their Anglo-Saxon origins, the "je ne sais quoi" of cricket has never taken hold on the other side of the Channel in quite the same way, reports France 24.
But that won't deter Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) from sending its latest side to France on Sunday as part of its ongoing mission to spread cricket round the world, and not just in the countries and lands of the former British Empire which provide its leading Test match nations.
Such "missionary work" matters to MCC, which owns London's Lord's ground -- the self-styled "home of cricket". This year also sees the club touring Cyprus, Uganda and Rwanda.
But suggestions a planned MCC tour of France in 1789 was scuppered by the French Revolution -- a rather more memorable reason for an abandonment than the customary "rain stopped play" -- may be more of a legend than historical fact according to MCC researcher Neil Robinson, with the club's records from that period destroyed in an 1825 fire.
"MCC was only formed in 1787 so you'd think they would have had more pressing issues than organising a tour of France two years later," Robinson, in charge of the library at Lord's, told AFP.
Read more of this AFP report published by France 24.