The scene is very English, but the setting is undoubtedly Rwandan.

A British team, made up of Conservative Party members and MPs who are in the country for a development project, are playing a game of cricket against a Rwandan Select XI, made up skilful youngsters and national team veterans.

The Rwandans are dressed in white, but the batsmen’s pads have turned a shade of orange after playing on a pitch made up mainly of dirt and tufts of dried grass. Halfway through an over, the game is interupted by a motorbike riding through a dirt track that runs through the ground. The rider slows down to appreciate the match on a ground that is usually used to graze cows.

This is Kicukiro Oval in French-speaking Rwanda, and it is no accident that the country has taken up cricket. In recent years Rwanda has become increasingly Anglophile; adopting English as its second official language and applying to join the Commonwealth.

The cricket ground’s location, the only pitch in the country, helps explain why Rwanda wants to move away from the French-speaking world. The ground lies next to the infamous Kicukiro College of Technology, where almost 3,000 Tutsis were murdered by Hutus in the genocide of 1994. Before the match starts the British players find a cache of machine gun bullets left over from the massacre.

Language is a delicate issue in Rwanda, thanks to its association with the genocide. The Interahamwe Hutu militia, responsible for the almost one million deaths of Tutsis and moderate hutus, were mainly French speakers. President Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front rebel movement, which ended the genocide and now forms the majority of the government, was primarily English speaking.

Earlier this month diplomatic ties between France and Rwanda reached a new low. The Rwandan Ministry of Justice released a damning report into the genocide, concluding that: “France’s political and military policy makers were accomplices in both the preparation and execution of the 1994 genocide of Tutsis.”

The communique claimed that French soldiers took part in the rape, torture and killing of Tutsis and that French leaders knew that the genocide was being planned as early as 1990.

Former President François Mitterand and former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin are among the 33 military and political leaders named in the brief. French ministers called the allegations "intolerable", saying that French forces did "nothing wrong".

Diplomatic ties with France have already been cut after a French judge indicted senior Rwandan officials two years ago for allegedly conspiring to shoot down the aircraft carrying former President Juvenal Habyarimana — the event that triggered the genocide. This month's report put an abrupt end to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s tentative attempts to reopen dialogue with Kigali.

Instead President Kagame, an English speaker with a deep dislike of France, continues to work to strengthen ties with Britain.

Next year he will hear whether his application to join the Commonwealth, endorsed by the British Government, has been successful. If so Rwanda will become the second full member, after Mozambique, that has no formal links to the British Empire.

Speaking to The Times, Mr Kagame said: “We hope to have matters sorted out next year.

“Britain has been very helpful and supportive, and we can’t ask for more than they have done.”

Mr Kagame said that “there are no limits to the benefits” of joining the Commonwealth in terms of business and aid. Britain has become Rwanda’s biggest donor, contributing £46 million a year.

The Conservative Party’s development project in Rwanda this month also highlights a new-found partnership between Britain and Rwanda. A Ministry of Education decree ensured that all of Rwanda’s 1,500 primary school teachers attended two weeks of English classes run by the Tory volunteers.

Cricket is also a powerful symbol of Rwanda’s shift towards all things English. On a day off, the Conservative volunteers take on Rwandans at the game. Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, and opener for the British team, describes Rwanda as “a success story, from a country hollowed out, to a proper functioning state.”

Mr Maude top scores in the match with 20, but his wicket leads to a batting collapse, finishing with yet another English defeat at African hands.

Cricket is taking off here. In April Rwanda made the semi-finals of an International Cricket Council tournament in South Africa, beating Lesotho and Mozambique before falling to Ghana, in its best performance yet.

“With Rwanda being a Francophone country, it used to be hard to get the Ministry of Sport to be interested in the game,” says Julius Mbaraga from the Rwandan Cricket Board. “Now, it’s not a problem.”

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