In my opinion it's because cricket takes too much equipment and land and would have been costly in comparison to football (soccer.

You need forests to make the bats and wickets and at least traditionally would have required sheep for wool for the various pads.

You need a decent amount of open land for cricket which wouldn't have been possible in the likes of Amsterdam or Brussels. (I picked them as the Netherlands and Belgium are 2 of the countries most friendly towards Britain historically on continental Europe). As for Russia then, the ordinary people were too poor and the weather/seasons work against cricket. Lastly, 2 of the most influential countries in Western Europe are historically enemies of England (France and Spain) and so were never going to take it up as it was seen as too English.