Merrion knock up a ton

Cricket: The number 100 resonates loudly with cricketers. Batsmen of all levels daydream of scoring centuries, bowlers' careers are rated in how many hundreds of wickets they take, and for any international player to reach 100 caps for his or her country is a benchmark that helps elevate them from good to great.

And in this country, clubs come of age when they reach the 100 years mark, and south Dublin's Merrion CC is the latest to pass that milestone. This year it is raising its bat with a number of high-profile events, but none more so than the hosting of last Saturday's Antalis Senior Cup final in their Anglesea Road ground.

It is fitting that in this special year for the club it was granted the honour of staging the premier event in the Leinster calendar. And, as usual, Merrion members pitched together to put on a great day.

Merrion always struck me as a metaphor for Irish cricket as a whole. A real family organisation, dependant on a few familiar faces to do all the chores, they seem to survive through a combination of hard work and an underlying love of the game. Clubs like Merrion, and indeed the game in general in this country, do not keep going by accident and will always have a somewhat precarious existence.

They have had their hard times, and were almost relegated to a junior club in the early 1990s, having not won anything since the Simon Curley era in 1960. That move would have been the same as sounding the Last Post over Anglesea Road, and it is to the credit of the other Leinster clubs that they refused to vote Merrion out of senior existence.

What followed, of course, was vindication. Their youth policy paid dividends, with the likes of Angus Fleming, Joe Morrissey and the Joyce brothers coming through, and with a number of key overseas additions (notably Australian Brad Spanner) they turned Merrion, albeit briefly, into the strongest club in the province, winning the 2001 Leinster Senior League, the 20/20 Alan Murray Cup several times and getting to the 2002 Senior Cup final.

The club began as the old Irish Land Commission CC that played in the late 19th Century in Lansdowne Road. Merrion CC, so named after the street on which the ILC was based, began life at a small ground at Mount Argus in Harold's Cross and later at Mulally Fields beside the Player Wills tobacco factory on the South Circular Road.

They moved to their location beside the River Dodder in 1906, and have managed to survive such diverse challenges as floods (particularly in 1930 and Hurricane Charlie in 1986), annual Dublin Horse Shows and, in recent times, repeated approaches from developers.

With such names over the years as Gilligan, Shortt, Smith, O'Donnell, Hayden, Bernstein, Curley, Waldron, Duffy, Parkinson, King, Fleming, Joyce and many others, Merrion has thrived at one of the most atmospheric grounds in the country.

There are few better occasions than a close, banter-fuelled match at Anglesea Road on a sunny afternoon, followed by a couple of ales in front of the pavilion as the sun goes down behind the trees in Herbert Park. Long may it continue.