How cricket came to Corfu

If you are ever at one of those dinner parties where the company is competing to slag off the iniquities of the British Empire, counter with the two words: ‘Corfu’ and ‘cricket’.

Although never an actual colony (but rather a British protectorate), Corfu and the Corfiots are that rare thing – unashamedly Anglophile. There are several good reasons for this, not least including the British creation of the island’s celebrated university and Corfu town’s water and sewerage system.

But for some, the protectorate’s greatest gift was cricket. This year Corfu will be celebrating the bicentenary of the coming of the game to the jewel of the Ionian Sea – making Greece one of only four countries in the world to have played the game for that long.

It was a spontaneous match between a Royal Navy team and hastily assembled English opposition that started it all off in April 1823. The contest was played out on the Spianada, a tree- and café-lined grass sward between the palace and the splendid Venetian castle that guards the port.