So it was only after the War that the sport returned. First occupying British soldiers set up matches, then immigration in the 1960s and 1970s bought cricket-loving Indians and Pakistanis to the country. But the explosion in the German game over the last five years has been incredible: the number of clubs has doubled from 55 to 110. And, while the national team are almost all of Indian extraction, around 50 per cent of young cricketers now are native-born German.