Parkinson's lore
Page 43
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One needs to be a Yorkshireman who has suffered baptism by emu to have the courage to tell a cricketing story to the French. The man who fits this specification is Michael Parkinson, who opened the new UK subsidiary of Fraikin, the French truck rental and contract hire group, which has more than 9,000 vehicles and had a turnover of £31m last year.
After he had explained the game of cricket in breathtaking detail to a colleague's beautiful French wife, he said, she exclaimed: "Magnifique! They do all that on horseback?"
There is, of course, a theory that Britain owes cricket to the French — to le criquet. Another is that tennis, cricket and other ball games have a common ancestor in the Basque game of pelota. The Common Market is more common than I realised.