CRICKET/Round-up: Why is Irish cricket obliged to endure such a low profile? With the notable exception of The Irish Times in national terms and the Fingal Independent at regional level, the game gets scant coverage in the Republic's news media, least of all on television or radio, though the Dublin station Near FM 101.6 is an honourable exception which actively promotes Leinster cricket and covers Ireland's home internationals.

Perhaps the old "garrison game" notion still persists, though that is doubtful, given that the same meaningless phrase could be applied to soccer, hockey and rugby, none of which are exactly ailing. Nor is Irish cricket ailing, be it said; one of the few sports organised on an all-island basis, there are more players than ever participating at all levels of the game.

The fact is that cricketers themselves, at club and representative levels, are pretty hopeless, or pretty uninterested, in promoting and selling their own sport.

Yes, it is true that many clubs attract droves of kids on certain evenings, while the work of the Leinster Cricket Union's (LCU) development officer, Brian O'Rourke, one of the very few full-time cricket administrators, has been invaluable over the past few years.

Commercial sponsors are very thin on the ground, while sponsorship money is paltry, to put it kindly. Last year, North County won the Leinster Senior 50-Overs League (sponsored by Lewis Traub) and subsequently went on to capture the Royal Liver Irish Senior Cup, Irish cricket's only all-island club competition, thereby becoming only the second Leinster side to do so.

In financial terms, those two victories earned the club a total of £2,500 (Irish), a handy few quid all right, but positively derisory when compared to the sponsorship rewards attainable in other sports. And had North County added the Leinster Senior (Conqueror) Cup and the Leinster Senior 55-Overs League - sponsored by Whitney Moore & Keller - to their trophy room, their winnings would have totalled about £5,000, scarcely a fortune.

What this means, in essence, is that Irish cricket officialdom has sold its game short, while sponsors are getting at least some sort of promotion and publicity for putting derisory financial pittances into the sport. Nor has the sponsorship money increased every season.

There are other sponsors at lower levels of the game in Leinster, who seem to want to keep their heads down, as it were, which is fair enough. And there is no doubt about the amount of voluntary hard work put into the running of cricket by officials at provincial and national level.

But there is much more to be done, as Bertie Ahern might put it. With one or two honourable exceptions, the silence from the clubs is deafening, and correspondents like yours truly are not exactly inundated with information about teams, developments, events, future plans, or what have you; the overall attitude is: If you want to know something, then find out about it yourself.

Most clubs are content to go along as they always have done, unheralded and unknown outside the realms of cricket itself. Whether this regrettable - and unnecessary - state of affairs is the result of thoughtlessness or an inherent (if unexpressed) desire to keep the game exclusive is a matter of opinion, but the end result could be described as "playing with ourselves".

Admittedly, Irish cricket has not been helped by the poor showing of the national team in recent times. Had Ireland qualified in Toronto last summer, participation in next year's World Cup in South Africa, with consequent television and massive media coverage, would surely have done untold good for the domestic game; the aim now must be creditable performances in European competition.