IRELAND'S CONTRIBUTION to the long and rich history of the Ashes series goes back to even before the Sporting Timesnewspaper in London printed their famous obituary to the English game after their defeat to Australia at The Oval in 1882, which concluded with, shall we say, the immortal line: "The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia".
A quarter of a century earlier a young Thomas Patrick Horan departed Midleton in Cork with his parents and siblings to start a new life in Australia, one that would see him go on to captain the country on two occasions and play his small part in the birth of one of sport’s greatest rivalries.
At 20, he made his first-class debut for Victoria against New South Wales at the MCG on St Stephen’s Day in 1874 in a side that also included Waterford-born Thomas Kelly.
The game was also notable for the first-class debut for New South Wales of one Frederick Spofforth, the granddaddy of Australian fast bowling who would go on to terrorise English batsman and earn him the nickname of The Demon.
Despite losing the match by six wickets, Horan and Kelly joined in a 54-run partnership during the second innings, while Horan would take the key wicket of Charles Bannerman, who would earn his place in Ashes history a couple of years later.
The venue was again the MCG for the first Test in history, a timeless match played between March 15th and 19th in 1877. Bannerman would prove the hero for Australia as they won by 45 runs, finishing the first day unbeaten on 126 to secure the title of first Test centurion and going on to make 165 before retiring hurt with a split index finger.
Horan would go on to play 14 more Tests, including one alongside Kelly in his second and final appearance in Australia’s 10-wicket victory at the MCG in January 1879.
That match marked the birth of a legend, as Spofforth took 13 wickets in just his second appearance. Included in his haul was England’s Dublin-born wicketkeeper Leland Hone in both innings.
In many respects, Horan’s mark on the game came more as a writer, a role he took up while still playing as he penned articles in the weekly Australasian paper under the pseudonym Felix.
Writing 20 years afterwards, his account of the last throes of the famous Oval Test in 1882, a match he played in, are still as vibrant and powerful over a century later.
Requiring just 84 to win, England were again to be thwarted by The Demon Spofforth, who finished with 14 wickets as Australia claimed an epic, seven-run victory. Horan described the dramatic scenes thus: “. . . the strain even for the spectators was so severe that one onlooker dropped down dead, and another with his teeth gnawed out pieces of his umbrella handle. That was the match in which for the final half-hour you could have heard a pin drop, while the celebrated batsmen, AP Lucas and Alfred Lyttelton, were together, and Spofforth and Boyle bowling at them as they never bowled before.
“That was the match in which the last English batsman had to screw his courage to the sticking place by the aid of champagne, when one man’s lips were ashen grey and his throat so parched that he could hardly speak as he strode by me to the crease; when the scorer’s hand shook so that he wrote Peate’s name like ‘geese’, and when, in the wild tumult at the fall of the last wicket, the crowd in one tremendous roar cried ‘bravo Australia’.”
