Naturally played by Irishmen: a social history of Irish cricket

Abstract

This study considers the history of Irish cricket in the context of wider social and political developments. It looks at the origins of the sport, how they came to be associated with a British presence in Ireland and the implications of this during a period of nationalist revival. It considers the rise and decline of cricket in Ireland and provides suggestions for its maintenance and current renaissance. The study is in part a celebration of the success of the Irish team at the 2007 World Cup and a reminder of the contribution to worldwide cricket through the diaspora.

Notes

 ¹ Only seven members of the World Cup squad were in the group chosen to take on India and South Africa in Ireland in July 2007. In addition to a number of injuries and one retirement, Jeremy Bray and Eoin Morgan failed to make themselves available.

 ² See, Brookes, English Cricket, 15 for a brief account of the origins of cricketing words.

 ³ Altham and Swanton, A History of Cricket, 15.

 ⁴ Caulfield, Cricket is an Ancient Irish Game, 25–6.

 ⁵ Caulfield, Cricket is an Ancient Irish Game, 32.

 ⁶ Bowen, Cricket, 118.

 ⁷ Mair, ‘Scotland’, 556.

 ⁸ Bergin and Scott, ‘Ireland’, 554.

 ⁹ Foster, Modern Ireland, 170.

¹⁰ Siggins, Green Days, 10.

¹¹ Later Governor of Madras, Secretary for War and the Colonies, had capital of Tasmania named after him.

¹² Foster, Modern Ireland, 248.

¹³ Garnham, ‘The Roles of Cricket in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland’, 40.

¹⁴ President of Montserrat in the West Indies in 1854 and lieutenant governor of St Kitts in 1855; he administered Hong Kong between 1859 and 1865, and was appointed governor of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He was made governor of New South Wales in 1872; governor of New Zealand (1879–80); and finally of the Cape Colony and high commissioner in South Africa.

¹⁵ Quoted in Hyam, Britain's Imperial Century, 295.

¹⁶ Garnham, ‘The Roles of Cricket in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland’, 36.

¹⁷ Connolly, The Oxford Companion to Irish History, 523.

¹⁸ Davis, ‘Irish Cricket and Nationalism’, 84.

¹⁹ Karl Johnson, ‘Bowling Over the Sub-continent’. The Irish Times, August 10, 2002.

²⁰ Garnham, ‘The Roles of Cricket in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland’, 30.

²¹ ‘Why it's “Wicket” to play Cricket (Honest!)’. Irish Independent, June 24, 2004.

²² Pollock and Parkhill, Made in Belfast, 5.

²³ Technically speaking this was not a full Irish side. Members included the Hon. F.G.B. Ponsonby, one of the founders of I Zingari and the Liverpool-born W. Buttress McCormick, who would become the Honorary Chaplain to Queen Victoria.

²⁴ 1879, 1888, 1892 and 1909. Full details of these contests are available on the Cricket Archive website: http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/index.html.

²⁵ ‘Why it's “Wicket” to play Cricket (Honest!)’. Irish Independent, June 24, 2004.

²⁶ Sugden and Bairner, Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland, 49.

²⁷ ‘Carolan’ [Charles Kickham?], ‘Old Sports and Pastimes’. The Celt, X (October 1857), 151. Quoted in Garnham, ‘The Roles of Cricket in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland’, 28.

²⁸ Garnham, ‘The Roles of Cricket in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland’, 33.

²⁹ Davis, ‘Irish Cricket and Nationalism’, 83.

³⁰ Garnham, ‘The Roles of Cricket in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland’, 36.

³¹ O'Shea, Charles Stewart Parnell, 209.

³² Owen Conway, ‘Lord Hawke at Home’, article in Windsor Magazine, 1898. Quoted in Rayvern Allen, Cricket's Silver Lining, 241.

³³ Anderson, Imagined Communities.

³⁴ Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, 155.

³⁵ Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 8–9.

³⁶ Brown, Ireland, 69.

³⁷ Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 152.

³⁸ Quoted in Holt, Sport and the British, 238.

³⁹ David Greene, ‘Michael Cusack and the Rise of the GAA’, in O'Brien, The Shaping of Modern Ireland, 78.

⁴⁰ Cronin, ‘Catholics and Sport in Northern Ireland’, 30.

⁴¹ Lyons, Culture and Anarchy in Ireland, 41–2.

⁴² Foster, Modern Ireland, 394.

⁴³ Mandle, The Gaelic Athletic Association and Irish Nationalist Politics, 221.

⁴⁴ Hutchinson, The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism, 153.

⁴⁵ Cooper, ‘Canadians Declare “It isn't Cricket”’, 74–5; Seymour, Baseball, 31.

⁴⁶ Quoted in Siggins, Green Days, 27.

⁴⁷ ‘An Irishman's Diary’. Irish Times, March 29, 2007.

⁴⁸ Daniel O'Connell had argued that, ‘It would be of vast benefit to mankind if all the inhabitants of the earth spoke the same language … I can witness without a sigh the demise of Irish’. Murphy, ‘The Gaelic Background’, 9.

⁴⁹ Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland, 177.

⁵⁰ Siggins, Green Days, 58.

⁵¹ The West Indies visited in 1928 India in 1936, New Zealand 1937 and Australia in 1938.

⁵² Brown, Ireland, 174.

⁵³ John Hume, founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, bowled his left-arm ‘twisters’ for them.

⁵⁴ Brown, Ireland, 280.

⁵⁵ New Ireland Forum, Report of Proceedings, Irish Episcopal Conference Delegation, 15. The New Ireland Forum was an attempt to bring political parties from the North and the South together to discuss proposals for unity. Unionist parties and the British rejected it.

⁵⁶ Ed Power, ‘They Think it's all Overs … It is Now’. Irish Independent, August 26, 2005.

⁵⁷ Ian Callender, ‘There's no Rest for the Wicket’. Newsletter (Belfast), August 11, 2003.

⁵⁸ Heywood, Political ideas and Concepts, 58.

⁵⁹ Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 6.

⁶⁰ O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia, 11.

⁶¹ Horton, ‘The “Green” and the “Gold’, 71. See also Bairner in this volume.

⁶² Bradman, Farewell to Cricket, 300, 287.

⁶³ Quoted in Melville, The Tented Field, 33.

⁶⁴ Foster, Modern Ireland, 359.

⁶⁵ Ridge, ‘Irish County Societies in New York, 1880–1914’, 290.

⁶⁶ Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 81–2.

⁶⁷ ‘A Game Selling Itself Short’. The Irish Times, May 22, 2002.

⁶⁸ ‘Irish Cricket no Longer on a Sticky Wicket’. Irish Times, March 24, 2007.