The 198 riders are primed. The Dales and the Pennine moors await. With 2 million fans expected, the White Rose county's embrace of the Tour de France is proving to be as warm and enthusiastic as it would have seemed improbable, back in the distant days of lonely road-race pioneers such as Tom Simpson or Beryl Burton. Saturday's grand départ along Leeds's Headrow will fire the starting pistol for a gloriously unlikely but fervent weekend of Yorkshire homage to France's greatest sporting event. As such, it is not just a great sporting occasion and a weekend to remember for Yorkshire, but also a reminder that some sporting cultural walls are not now as forbidding as they once were. This raises the question of whether further initiatives could be taken to reduce other such walls between nations. The United States, after all, seems to have fallen in love with football during the World Cup. Only this week, a Berlin reader pointed out in our letters column that Germany may be poised to embrace rugby. So this is the ideal time for Britain to give something back to France in acknowledgement of the honour of hosting part of the Tour. And what better sport for the purpose than cricket, at which Yorkshire historically excels and at which France has had little success since winning the Olympic silver medal for cricket in 1900. If we can have the Tour de France in 2014, it is surely only fair that France should host an Ashes Test match in 2015. One thing is certain. French cricket would never be the same again.