by Tim Wigmore
Cricket also found itself under attack from the newly formed Gaelic Athletic Association. Formed in 1884, it sought to organise and popularise ‘Irish sports’ – principally hurling and Gaelic football. The GAA can only be understood within the context of the Irish independence struggle. ‘If any two purposes should go together they ought to be politics and athletics’, wrote Michael Cusack, the founder of the GAA, in 1884. ‘Our politics being essentially national, so should our athletics.’
Cusack had once been a cricket player but he turned against it as his nationalism hardened. The GAA was ruthless in destroying competition from other sports. In 1901, the association’s constitution formalised what its official guide referred to as ‘The Ban’. This prohibited the playing, or even watching, of ‘foreign’ sports like cricket: anyone who did not comply would be barred from playing in games organised by the GAA. It remained in place until 1971.
Yet the GAA did not destroy cricket’s popularity on its own. Rugby and football, which were also banned, thrived. Cricket was in no position to survive the new threat. From the 1870s, The Irish newspaper and Lawrence, the editor of The Handbook of Cricket in Ireland, pleaded for a national organisation to be formed to run the sport. No one took notice until it was far too late.
The first attempt to formalise cricket in Ireland did not occur until 1890. Yet even this did not get off the ground: home clubs selected the Ireland side and were reluctant to give this power up. ‘Local authorities fought among themselves and fought spectacularly,’ Dr Rouse explained. ‘The lack of a single body for cricket is the starting point for understanding the demise of Irish cricket.’ It was only in 1923 that a coherent body, the Irish Cricket Union, was created to oversee the sport.
A lot had happened in the meantime. As anti-British feeling intensified, cricket became a popular target for nationalists. During the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), many houses that had provided homes for cricket pitches were attacked and burned by republicans, including that of Sir Timothy O’Brien, who was born in Dublin but played five Tests for England between 1884 and 1896.
In 1922, Ireland was partitioned. While Irish cricket had already been profoundly weakened this served as another blow to the game, especially in the Republic of Ireland. Many clubs in the Republic were heavily dependent upon the British military and civil service. For a new nation forging its identity, the quintessentially English nature of cricket made it abhorrent to nationalists.
Ironically, the middle-class leaders of the independence movement had far more exposure to the game: the Irish nationalist political leader Charles Stewart Parnell was a committed player until his death in 1891. Later, nationalists who loved cricket were compelled to conceal their embrace of the sport. The Irish journalist Ger Siggins has found that Éamon de Valera, a leading figure in pre-independence Ireland and president and Taoiseach after it, was once playing with a bat. When he saw a photographer he dropped it immediately, knowing that to be seen playing cricket would make him a pariah with his GAA-playing, mass-attending, nationalist Fianna Fáil supporters.
But cricket did not collapse – not quite, anyway. Partly, this speaks of the continuities after partition: most aspects of Irish life did not change. In Northern Ireland, the sport held obvious appeal for Protestants wishing to illustrate their commitment to the British Crown; the same was true of the Protestant minority in the northwest.
In the bulk of the Republic of Ireland, it failed to establish a support base beyond the middle-class, though it remained reasonably strong in Cork and Dublin. The Irish Cricket Union also proved capable all-Ireland custodians of the game, preventing sectarianism from infiltrating the side, and successfully organising fixtures in both the North and the Republic.
The sport had a very different character in different parts of Ireland. In Northern Ireland and the north-west it was more widely played. In the Republic, most of the cricket that was played revolved around Dublin, where it was seen as the preserve of so-called ‘West Brits’. ‘Maybe posh is the wrong word,’ the Dubliner Dougie Goodwin, who captained Ireland in the 1960s, reflected. ‘It was certainly middle and upper class.’
For a century, Irish cricket was doomed to lead a half-life. The only regular fixture for the national side was an annual first-class game against Scotland that began in 1909 and, for the next 90 years, would be interrupted only by world wars. Most summers, Ireland played only three or four other games.
Some touring sides to England deigned to pay Ireland a perfunctory visit too, though the matches were always unofficial. Occasionally, Ireland would even defeat the tourists. In 1904 they beat South Africa. In 1928 they won a three-day game against the West Indies, who had just been awarded Test status. And in 1969, Ireland bowled the West Indies out for 25.
The West Indies’ visit occurred against the appalling backdrop of the escalating Troubles in Northern Ireland. Unlike football, in which Northern Ireland and the Republic had separate national sides, an all-Ireland side had always played cricket, as was the case in rugby and hockey. The united side was not without its difficulties: one explanation for the inertia in creating a unified Irish cricket authority is that local regions relished the chance to pack sides representing Ireland with their own players.
Perhaps because it was such a minority sport, cricket was largely able to forge an existence free of sectarian divides. ‘We played up there at times when the Troubles were really bad but it had no effect on the cricket,’ the Ireland captain in 1969, Goodwin, told me. ‘It was only once in my sporting career that I was asked my religion and that was by one of my own team because the people, the members of the club, asked him to ask me. I didn’t know his religion and he didn’t know mine. It never entered into it.’
Roy Torrens, who played for 16 years from 1966, said, ‘In the actual team itself there was never any politics talked about.’
Yet cricket has not proved completely immune to the wider struggles in Ireland. The IRA occasionally dug up cricket pitches, which were seen as a symbol of Unionist dominance. As recently as 2002 an Ireland fixture was halted for an hour because the Mooney brothers John and Paul refused to play a match against Italy while North Down Cricket Club, in Belfast, flew the Union Jack. Eventually it was taken down and the match commenced. Today Ireland uses its own neutral flag. ‘Cricket Ireland has moved on from those days and works very hard with all the clubs and everybody to try and make sure that things like that don’t happen,’ John Mooney reflected.
When Birrell was coach, players made light of the divisions. ‘I didn’t know at the time who was a Protestant and who was a Catholic. Brían O’Rourke said, “It’s quite easy, the Catholics have their eyes close together and the Protestants have their eyes wide apart.” At the next practice I kept looking at the players, at how wide their eyes were apart, and they were in stitches of laughter. I obviously got them all wrong!’ Birrell ‘didn’t detect different camps within the team at all’.
A reminder of the political context in which Irish cricket is played came in April 2013 when John Mooney reacted to Margaret Thatcher’s death by tweeting that he hoped it had been ‘slow and painful’.
On 2 July 1969, cricket provided a glorious diversion from the Troubles. Folklore has it that the West Indians were hungover after being treated to a night on the town the previous day. The truth is a little more humdrum: the West Indies only arrived in Sion Mills, a tiny village in the west of Northern Ireland, after midnight following a Test at Lord’s the previous day.
‘They were late getting in and going to bed but there was no question of drink affecting their performance – they wouldn’t have had time to drink,’ Goodwin remembered. Even had the players wanted to drink into the early hours, no pubs stayed open that late. And Ireland’s players were barely better prepared: they worked a full day’s work the day before the game.
Until the 1990s, coin-tossing skills were seldom required of the Ireland captain. ‘When I went out to the toss, Basil Butcher, the West Indies captain that day, aske
d before I had even suggested it whether I would like them to bat first,’ Goodwin reflected. ‘I said, certainly, that is what I was going to say to you.’ After all, the spectators had come to watch the tourists bat. On this day, they would not get much chance to do so.
While the pitch was green so were most wickets in Ireland. There was nothing exceptionally treacherous about this surface. The pitch was too slow and low to suit the Caribbean stroke-makers. And Ireland had a wily pair to exploit their uncertainty – Goodwin and Alec O’Riordan, who both bowled unchanged.
‘When I saw the wicket there was a fair bit of grass on it which suited seam bowling. They had no covers at Sion Mills and there had been some overnight damp. It was kind of damp starting off,’ Goodwin said. ‘The wicket didn’t really suit their style of play. They were trying to drive the ball and the ball just wasn’t coming on to the bat with the result that it was going up in the air, and anything that went up in the air our fellows caught.’
So swift was the West Indian demise that the BBC, who had planned to broadcast the game from 12noon, an hour after play started, started recording earlier to ensure the remarkable collapse was preserved on camera. Extraordinarily the West Indies were soon 12/9, with Basil Butcher, Clive Lloyd and Clyde Walcott among eight batsmen who fell caught. This was no wicket for Caribbean flair.
As word spread, several thousand were at the ground to witness the end of the innings as the final pair doubled the score. ‘We would have been happy to have them all out for 12 if we could have,’ O’Riordan reflected, but 25 all out would do. ‘These things happen. I’ve played in sides that have been bowled out for 25 so I know what it’s like.’
Ireland went past West Indies’ score for the loss of only one wicket. Fans, and those just curious about the bizarre events that they had heard were unfolding, were able to watch on television. It was one example of the importance of the rise in TV ownership and the extension of the BBC’s reach (in the age when it broadcast cricket) in Irish cricket history. The BBC cricket commentary became one of the sounds of summer for Irish cricketing dynasties like the Joyce and O’Brien families.
Ireland’s players did not have long to celebrate. As soon as the game was over, they had an 80-mile trip to Belfast for a two-day game against the West Indians the next day. None of the side ever played county cricket. O’Riordan turned down multiple offers and chose a more secure life as an engineer instead.
Despite its occasional successes, Irish cricket fundamentally remained a joke. It took until 1980 for Ireland to be asked to participate in one-day county cricket and get regular official fixtures against a side other than Scotland.
Ireland were amateur in both the best and worst senses of the word. Best, in that all those who played did so for the love of the game; and worst, in that funding for cricket was so meagre that players made a loss from playing. Roy Torrens told me how he would learn of selection for the occasional tours that Ireland went on. A letter would arrive in the post from the secretary of the Ireland side, informing him of his selection and asking him to, ‘Please confirm your availability and send a cheque to cover your airfare.’
On a tour to the United States and Canada in 1973, players had to take five weeks off work, completely unpaid. ‘There were a lot of players who couldn’t afford to play for Ireland,’ Torrens reflected.
When international sides visited Ireland they were met by a motley bunch of enthusiastic club cricketers masquerading as international sportsmen.
On one occasion when Torrens faced Australia in Dublin, he had to spend the previous night sleeping in the armchair of an Irish cricket fan: funds were so lacking that Ireland could not even afford to rent rooms for their players. ‘They used to meet us at the ground the night before the game and take us away to their homes,’ Torrens said. ‘When I arrived at this guy’s house he had no spare bed but he had an armchair.’
Perhaps it was just as well that fixtures amounted to ‘a social game’, as Torrens put it. Fixtures against tourists to England were not recognised as official matches, let alone full internationals. ‘Whilst in one sense it’s lovely to play against the West Indies, did I really enjoy it? Probably not. You knew that for them it wasn’t really a competitive game,’ reflected Alan Lewis, who played for Ireland between 1984 and 1997.
‘The crowds were coming to see them, not see us. We were literally regarded as the fodder. You were meeting up for a weekend. We’d have a beer, we’d have to go to a reception. The event was bigger than the team itself – that was the way it was viewed.’
The sides Lewis captained hardly had much chance. ‘I could go from a club game on a Sunday to Sylvester Clarke on a Wednesday.’ The lack of depth in Irish cricket was such that ‘once you got into the team it was nearly more difficult to get out off it’.
Perhaps the best indication of the lack of regard for Irish cricket – both inside Ireland and beyond – was that Ireland were not members of the ICC. This meant that Ireland did not even attempt to qualify for the World Cup.
The 1990s were, as Gideon Haigh has put it, the ICC’s dalliance with League of Nations idealism. Ireland were one of the beneficiaries: the Irish Cricket Union was elected as a member of the ICC in 1993, and were awarded associate status. As with most ICC decisions, there was an element of arbitrariness to it – Scotland, generally better than Ireland, did not earn associate status until the following year.
There was very little to suggest that Ireland were ready to embark upon a cricketing transformation. Indeed there was a conservative faction that did not think Ireland should join the ICC. ‘There was a powerful element in the Union that had to be dragged screaming into the 20th century before we even considered the 21st,’ Ger Siggins recounted. ‘The feeling was that we were better operating as a type of ‘super Minor County’ getting NatWest games and fixtures against the tourists.’
Such small-mindedness was overcome and, suddenly, Ireland had participation in the World Cup to dream of. For the first time, Ireland could also afford a full-time coach. Former England fast bowler Mike Hendrick was appointed Ireland’s first coach in 1995. He was met by an attitude that would have driven most school coaches mad. ‘Players wouldn’t turn up because they had excuses like, “I had to take my wife shopping” or, “I had to take my wife to have her hair done”,’ Torrens said. ‘Those were excuses that Mike met.’
Hendrick expected to last a year in the job. In the end, he liked it so much that he stayed for five. As the former Ireland off-spinner Kyle McCallan put it, ‘He shook it up. He brought a very professional attitude.’
There was no shortage of work to do. A year after Hendrick arrived, McCallan made his debut in a two-day match against Wales. ‘You played to get your cap and your jumper and you were playing to get another game and a 20 or 30 was satisfying. You’d think you’d done okay and you’d get another game.’
His one-day debut was in the Benson and Hedges Cup against Sussex in Belfast. Ireland conceded 384 and were bowled out for 80. ‘Without being derogatory, the boys wanted to be able to say we played against so and so and swapped shirts with so and so. Rather than going out to win and get that scalp, we wanted to avoid failure.’
Such defeatism would not be tolerated by Hendrick. In 1997 Ireland recorded their first win against an English first-class county after 17 years of trying, beating Middlesex with a little help from their overseas player, Hansie Cronje. They also put up their best ever display in qualification for the World Cup. Ireland finished fourth in the ICC Trophy in 1997; had they won one more game – and they lost to Kenya by only seven runs – they would have been one of the three associates to make it to the 1999 World Cup. In 1998, Irish cricket also received a one-off boost with its inclusion in the Commonwealth Games: Northern Ireland defeated Bangladesh.
Hendrick’s excellent contacts in county cricket were to be just as important to Irish cricket as his contribution to the national side. During their century in the cricketing wilderness Ireland produced some fine players, but they ju
st did not play county cricket.
Of those who learned the game in Ireland in the last half of the 20th century, left-arm spinner Dermott Monteith was the most successful in English cricket. And though his performances were exemplary – 24 wickets at 25 each – Monteith only played eight Championship games, as cover for John Emburey and Phil Edmonds for Middlesex in 1981 and 1982. Counties seldom considered Irish talent when assembling their squads. The poor wages in county cricket did not help, making promising cricketers disinclined to travel across the Irish Sea and attempt to win a contract.
Ireland needed a pioneer in county cricket to show counties that Irishmen could play cricket. They found it in Ed Joyce, recommended to Middlesex by Hendrick. ‘We banished the myth that you don’t play cricket in Ireland,’ McCallan said. ‘Ed went over and started to perform and what that did is send a message to the rest of the Irish guys that there are careers in cricket here.’ Joyce was the first born-and-bred Irishman to make a full-time career from playing cricket.
Even as Joyce was scoring over 1,000 first-class runs in five consecutive seasons from 2002, Irish cricket remained as undistinguished as ever. When Ireland were trying to qualify for the 2003 World Cup they twice had to enlist the journalist James Fitzgerald as a substitute fielder during the ICC Trophy in Canada in 2001.
‘As a reporter, I went up to the team manager John Wright and I asked him who his 12th man was going to be that day,’ Fitzgerald reflected. ‘He kind of looked around and said, “Are you available?” I said, “Yeah, I could give you a bit of time as I don’t have to file my copy until later this evening.”’
Although he had the pleasure of living every journalist’s dream and participating in international cricket, he describes it as ‘probably the lowest point of Ireland’s recent history’. At least the incident generated some headlines for the game: The Irish Independent made the reporter the story and put him on the front page. Ireland finished eighth in the tournament, below Denmark and the United States.
