T HE BIKE riders competing in the Tour du Rwanda, billed as “Africa’s biggest cycling race”, hurtled off on February 24th across mountains famous for gorillas, with the eighth and final lung-bursting stage ending in Kigali, the capital, a week later. President Paul Kagame, meanwhile, tweets his loyalty to Arsenal Football Club. His cash-strapped government is paying the club $39m over three years for the words “Visit Rwanda” to appear on the sleeves of the players’ shirts. Rwandan aficionados of cricket, however, say it is their own hallowed game that is growing fastest.

According to Cricket Builds Hope, a British charity backed by David Cameron when he was prime minister, Rwanda now has 24 cricket clubs, 98 schools that play the game and 15,000 regular players, 40% of them female.

A largely Francophone country until Mr Kagame made English compulsory in schools a decade ago, Rwanda is an unlikely hotspot for cricket. Most locals had barely heard of the sport until this century, when a handful of Rwandans of Indian descent and a clutch of returnees brought up in English-speaking Uganda and Kenya decided to give the game a go. A friend of Mr Cameron, the late Christopher Shale, who happened to chair his local Conservative Party branch, then raised a chunk of money to bring in the bulldozers to build one of the most beautiful cricket grounds anywhere in the world at Gahanga, a village half an hour south of Kigali. The oval outfield is sown with Bermuda grass and the practice pitch is made of astroturf, both imported from South Africa.

Most other Rwandan pitches are a lot rougher. The country’s hilly topography is not ideally suited to the game. The first national pitch was made of frayed mats laid over bumpy concrete, sometimes eroded by termites, which made for some wicked bouncers. “People have lost their teeth,” says Eric Dusingizimana, an engineer who captained Rwanda and entered the “Guinness Book of Records” for enduring the longest unbroken stint of batting practice (51 hours).

The wounds of the genocide of 1994, when perhaps 500,000 people, mainly ethnic Tutsis, were murdered by the previous, Hutu-dominated regime, have yet to heal. Those ethnic labels are unmentionable today. “The cricket club is a surrogate family for people who’ve lost loved ones,” says Mr Dusingizimana. “Cricket is more than just a game, it has united us.” Cricket Builds Hope also provides leadership workshops for poor women, teaching self-awareness, public speaking and advocacy. “It’s played a big role in post-genocide reconciliation,” says Mary Maina, a former captain of the women’s national team, perhaps exaggerating a little.