Smashing one over the boundary

Sam McBride, Sunday Life and Sunday Independent, July 21st, 2024

STORMONT IS HOSTING THE FIRST TEST CRICKET MATCH IN NORTHERN IRELAND'S HISTORY THIS WEEK. WHAT BETTER VENUE FOR A GAME WHERE NOTHING IS AT IT SEEMS?

I can still remember the frequency: 198 kHz longwave. Lying in bed late at night, Radio 4's crackly signal came from the analogue radio by my bed, turned low so as to not awake parents, who thought I was long asleep. My schoolboy tastes weren't Desert Island Discs or In Our Time, but Test Match Special.

The Almighty alone knows how I came to find it. Insomnia perhaps. None of my family played cricket, nor did my school. But the magic seeped through the airwaves from the other side of the world where England were racking up runs against South Africa, floundering against leg spin on a dusty fifth-day wicket in India, or battling the Australians in a tense Boxing Day Test Match in Melbourne.

Test cricket is a strange beast, where one game lasts five days — at the end of which it might be a draw. Such languid pace towards the possibility of ending up where things started is admittedly difficult to justify on purely logical grounds. But sport is as much about what lies between start and finish as the result. No sport can rival cricket's internal complexity. A team can be losing for days, yet still win; an indecisive captain who's far ahead can fail to win.

In a world desirous of instantaneous fulfilment, even many fans of cricket are seeking out shorter versions of the game. The venerable old form of the sport, played by WG Grace and Don Bradman, is in decline.

Yet on Thursday, a little bit of cricketing history will be made in my home city: Stormont will become the world's 123rd ground when it hosts Zimbabwe in the first Test match to be played in Northern Ireland.

Just getting to this level is an extraordinary achievement. As a child, the idea that Ireland would ever play a Test match in Belfast was so unfathomable that it wasn't even a dream.

Since achieving Test status in 2018, Ireland have played only nine matches, just one of which has been on home soil. Yet in February, the team recorded its first victory at the top level. It was against Afghanistan. Other top cricketing nations took far longer to get their first Test win: 17 years for South Africa and 26 years for New Zealand.

As with so much of this island's history, Irish cricket's roots are entwined with England. While cricket was introduced here by the English, it quickly grew in popularity across much of the country. The GAA came to ban it as a “foreign game” yet GAA founder Michael Cusack was a keen cricketer who wrote in 1882 that cricket was “the game best suited to the Irish character”.

Not everyone shared his view. Early in the Troubles, Cliftonville cricket club was driven out of north Belfast. In July 1972, the IRA abducted and murdered two young Protestant men before dumping their bodies to be found by children at the club's ground. The following month, a mob invaded the pitch to attack the players during a game, burning the clubhouse. It had been rebuilt after being bombed by the Nazis during the war, but this was different. To this day, the club plays home matches miles away.

Yet 70 miles north-west in Derry, young IRA commander Martin McGuinness had developed a love of cricket. The area had long been a hot bed of the sport. McGuinness's love of the game wasn't unique in the city's IRA unit. Bomber Shane Paul O'Doherty recalled playing cricket growing up. Hunger striker Raymond McCartney is also a fan.

One of McGuinness's first joint acts with Ian Paisley — before even they had taken up their roles as first and deputy first ministers in 2007 — was jointly to invite Ireland's cricketers to a Stormont reception following their remarkable win against Pakistan in the World Cup. It is therefore apt that this week's moment of history will come at Stormont.

While cricket is still seem as a largely Protestant sport in Northern Ireland, its history is more complex than the simple sectarianism that infuses Northern society. John Hume was a slow left-arm bowler and a middle-order batsman.

When the Test match was announced in April, it was Hume's successor as SDLP leader in Stormont who stood up in the Assembly to welcome the news. A short distance up the hill, atop which sits Parliament Buildings, Matthew O'Toole spoke of cricket as “a sport that has a proud and really fascinating history on this island... an example of pluralism and diversity”.

Yet this is not just about romance. What is happening now is another small symbol of Ireland's economic progress. It's possible to be poor and successful — as demonstrated by some of the great Brazilian footballers of yesteryear. But money makes success far more likely.

Despite concerns about the administration of Irish cricket in recent years and limited funds for what is still a niche pursuit on this island, the game now has riches that once would have been unimaginable.

Advertisers know they are marketing their products to a wealthier audience in a land which is booming. That money buys the coaches and facilities that make winning against the world's best more likely.

Migrants are also drawn to wealthy countries; as they have come they have enlivened the club scene across the island. “Ireland for the Irish” might be a popular street slogan in certain areas right now, but it won't be chanted by many international coaches. Among the Ireland team this week are likely to be former Zimbabwean international batsman Peter Moor and South African-born players Curtis Campher and Graham Hume.

Speaking in the Assembly in April, O'Toole said: “Some people prefer one-day cricket to Test cricket; they think that Test cricket can be grinding, attritional and difficult to watch. Some might say 'What better place for it than Stormont?'.”

Let's hope Ireland play with more free-spirited panache than characterises their more political counterparts up the hill.