An Irishman's Diary

AS it seeks to make the most in this country of Wednesday’s heroics in Bangalore, Cricket Ireland could do worse than publicise a still little-known fact about Oliver Cromwell.

Namely that, as part of his reign of terror here during the 1650s, he or his commissioners banned the playing of "krickett", as they spelled it. That's according to the sport's bible, Wisden, which notes that to ensure compliance, the commissioners ordered that all sticks and balls used in the game be "burnt by the common hangman".

Wider knowledge of Cromwell’s Irish cricket massacre would surely help overcome the ambivalence than many people in this country still feel about the sport; although the defeat of England may have eradicated much of that already.

Indeed, by yesterday, it was probably only diehard GAA loyalists who had resisted the urge to jump on the bandwagon before it gathered speed. And even some of those must have been tempted to take a short spin on the back bumper.

But assuming we do still have some, Ireland’s mixed feelings about cricket are a left-over of the sporting dilemma that faces all colonised countries when asserting their independence.

There are two broad choices: either they can choose to specialise in beating the colonisers at their own games, as Australia has tended to do, with great effect. Or they can boycott the “garrison” sports and concentrate on their own indigenous varieties, if necessary inventing them in the process.

The GAA took the boycott option, with much success. But it wasn’t instant success, even in counties with which it is now synonymous. In fact, as the dust settles in Bangalore, it’s worth recalling that not much more than a century ago, counties such as Tipperary and Kilkenny were still bastions of cricket.

In 1887, a GAA observer sent to a hurling match in Kilkenny city lamented that no spectators turned up. And even more discouraging than the attendance, he added, was the quality of play. This was “the worst and most spiritless ever witnessed on an Irish hillside,” he complained. “It would break the heart of a Moycarkey or Galway Gael”.

The county’s other small-ball code, by contrast, was thriving. Even 10 years later, when the GAA had found its feet, there were still 50 cricket clubs in Kilkenny. There is evidence that this was very much a post-Famine phenomenon and that cricket had filled a void in places where famine had destroyed Gaelic football and hurling, an impression that may have been to cricket’s detriment later on.

But even before the Famine, cricket was considered more than compatible with Ireland’s cause.

In 1843, the Nationnewspaper – in-house organ of both Daniel O'Connell's repeal movement and the Young Irelanders – regretted that "this manly game" was not making enough progress here, partly because of the poverty that left people without the stamina required to play it.

The Nation’s belief in the game’s manliness suggests another historical problem for cricket in Ireland. This is the contrary view of some sporting historians that, for the Irish psyche, it wasn’t manly enough.

Where caste-conscious Indians preferred cricket to contact sports, goes the theory, the Irish temperament was quite the opposite: hence the much greater success here – among minority sports anyway – of rugby, a game with similar social and political issues.

The feeling was summed up by one of Australia’s greatest-ever cricketers, Bill O’Reilly, whose grandfather emigrated from Ireland in the 1860s. Growing up in New South Wales, O’Reilly was bemused to learn that his beloved sport “did not come naturally to Irish people who, as I found out later, regarded it more or less as a foreign game that was somewhat beneath their dignity”.

In any case, and whatever the reasons, Ireland’s relationship with cricket has been a troubled one. But at least until Wednesday’s thriller in Bangalore, the historic turning point seemed to have happened in the 1890s, with the fall of Parnell.

The “Uncrowned King of Ireland” was such a cricket fanatic that Kitty O’Shea had a private pitch made for him at her home. And it has even been suggested that the game was a big influence on the tactics with which he once made the Irish Party so effective at Westminster.

Then came the disastrous split. After which, ironically, Parnell found the cricket-disdaining GAA among his staunchest supporters. Indeed, for several years afterwards, the association suffered for supporting him. But in the longer term, of course, it flourished, its ban on foreign games included.

Our subsequent history means that, as of this week, Gaelic football and hurling remain the only major sports played here in which Ireland has not inflicted a humiliating defeat on the English. This may allow the GAA’s critics to question again the wisdom of pursuing the play-your-own-game strategy rather than beat-them-at-theirs.

But maybe we can continue to do both, perhaps in time watching Ireland win the inaugural test series over England at Croke Park. In the meantime, there was a very pleasant irony for those of us who tuned into BBC radio for the closing stages of Wednesday’s match, only to hear Ireland’s arrival as a world cricketing power greeted in the gruff Yorkshire tones of a man named “Boycott”.