Former England cricket captain David Gower with columnist Will
Lyons. Matthew Lloyd for The Wall Street Journal  David Gower
pauses over his glass of wine. The former England cricket
captain, who has a penchant for French wines, particularly those
from Bordeaux, is trying to recall whether he has ever played
cricket there.  "Have I played in France?" he repeats, topping
us both up with a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc from a
vineyard he describes as "round the corner, over the hill and
just the other side" of the Loire's famous Sancerre. The answer,
after some thought, is no.  The Bordeaux Cricket Club, with its
picturesque pitch set amid the vines of Château Giscours, may
have passed Mr. Gower by, but having scored more than 8,000 runs
as a batsman for England, he's not one to let a question beat
his off-side stump. "There is a cricket club of which I am an
honorary member, called the White Hunters," he recalls. "The
White Hunters are rubbish, self-confessed rubbish, but they tend
to tour France every year