The two-week visit to Ireland by a team of Indian amateur cricketers, the Jamnagar Invitation XI, recalls this country's one-time association with one of the legendary stars of the summer game - His Highness Shri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, Maharajah Jam Saheb of Nawangar - Ranji, "Prince of Cricketers". The tour has been organised by the Chetna Club from the State of Gujarat, the capital of which is Jamnagar, where Ranji died in the Jam Palace, on April 2nd, 1933, aged 61.

Ranji's name and memory lives on in Ballynahinch Castle, long since an elegant hotel, outside Clifden in Co Galway. Originally the ancestral the home of the Martin family, Ballynahinch was acquired by Ranji in 1924 and from then until his death he was a regular visitor, to indulge in his two other sporting loves - fishing and shooting.

Today, there are plaques to both Ranji and to "Humanity Dick" Martin, the campaigner against cruelty to animals, at the entrance to the hotel, and inside there are blown-up though uncaptioned photographs of the Maharajah and of his two nieces, Baba and Bjaniba, who he sent to nearby Kylemore Abbey to be educated by the Benedictine nuns. But it's probably safe to assume that most of the guests who go to Ballynahinch know not a lot about the man who helped establish cricket's golden age, when Ranji's genius shone as bright as sun on dappled lake water.

It was Ranji who had the fishing huts and stands along the river and lakes built, and who supervised the laying out of Ballynahinch's magnificent woods and gardens. The atmospheric bar with its open fire was originally the billiard room where every September 10th, Ranji celebrated his birthday by throwing a party for all his staff. He served the guests and arranged for a truck to stand-by outside, to ferry the more enthusiastic revellers to their homes at the end of the party.

When Ranji acquired Ballynahich - initially leasing its then 30,000 acres - he was 52, his cricketing days long behind him. Yet, his sporting reputation and his political stature with the League of Nations were such that W T Cosgrave, president of the fledgling Free State, gave a civic reception followed by an official dinner, in his honour when he arrived in Dublin. The Maharajah duly reciprocated with a banquet in the Shelbourne Hotel.

Over the years, Ranji played a very active part in the affairs of the Ballynahinch locality. His popularity was hardly surprising; he employed over 100 workers on the estate and his generosity, like his cricket, was legendary. Each summer when he arrived in Ireland, he would buy a fleet of cars and before leaving for India the following October he would distribute them as gifts, the parish priest, the local teacher and the Garda sergeant often being among the lucky recipients.

Each year, the arrival of his entourage at the long-closed local railway station would be greeted by exploding fire-crackers, laid on the lines by his employees, by way of welcome. Each autumn, Ranji must surely have carried such memories back with him to India; as Alan Ross wrote in his 1983 biography - "Ballynahinch was the place on earth dearest to Ranji. When he returned (to India) in the autumn he took with him a dinner service, each plate of which contained a different view of castle, lake, river and hills".

And it is easy to imagine the impact which the Indian Maharajah must have made on the then remote and spectacularly beautiful part of Ireland, some 70 years ago. The present writer's late mother-in-law, then in her first job as a student teacher in nearby Roundstone, remembered the arrival of the royal retinue, the shock of seeing coloured faces for the first time, and the dire warnings given by her peers concerning the dangers of romantic dalliance with the dark strangers.

Fittingly, the members of the Jamnagar Invitation squad will be taken to see Ballynahinch Castle next Monday; given that they will have stayed the previous night in the An Oige hostel at nearby Benlettery, they will find the visit something of a contrast. But as sporting pilgrims they will see the river and the loughs and the mountains which their kinsman loved. They will silently stray through the rooms and the corridors once walked by Ranji and they will recall the genius which bloomed on languid, long-ago days during cricket's golden age -

. . . . . as he took the bat and lit day's close,

Gliding and glancing, guiding fine or square

The subtlest bowls, and smoothing, as wave-wise

Rough-hurled they rose,

With a sure sweetness.