SCHOOL REPORT CUS, LEESON STREET, DUBLIN: Seán Kennyreports on the revival of cricket at a school which has been long associated with the sport.

FORGET METAPHOR; cricket is an actual presence in Catholic University School (CUS). Wickets, white against red brick, dot the yard. Tarmac is a substitute for grass, plastic bat for willow.

Needs must in the huddle of buildings around Leeson Street. When competing, the school generally uses Merrion CC's ground in Ballsbridge. In the yard, cricket will break out among the milling throng at break times, as spontaneous and normal as any sport played by youngsters.

Deputy principal Kevin Jennings has a long association with the game in CUS.

"It's the most popular summer sport," he remarks. "It's a very popular informal game. They're more likely to play an impromptu game of cricket with a plastic bat in the yard than to play an impromptu game of soccer, or as likely."

Deep roots have been sunk, down as far as CUS's primary (prep) school. Boys are encouraged to play the sport. Cricket kids. They say the funniest things. Stephen Tonge, another teacher long involved with the game, catches fragments.

"You will hear discussions in the yard. A prep will come up to you and say, 'Was that a leg break or a googly?' And you'll be going, 'Em . . . ' But they see it from a very early age, and that it's just a normal game to be played."

Cricket in the school has a cobwebbed history, stretching all the way back to the 1850s. Back then, the school's proximity to St Stephen's Green meant it enjoyed the luxury of those lush acres of grass on which to play.

"The school originally played in St Stephen's Green, before it became a public park," says Jennings. "This is going back to a time pre-GAA, pre-Football Association. There's a strong tradition of it in the school and close connections between the school and a number of cricket clubs, particularly Merrion.

"Merrion have strong associations with the school in the way that Lansdowne in the past had a strong rugby association. The greater number of CUS lads would play with Merrion, although we have a good spread."

Cricket was played for over 100 years before coming to a halt in 1972, crowded out by the pressures of the Leaving Cert.

Then, in 1985, a letter landed on Jennings's desk. Cliff Kennedy, a past-pupil involved in the formation of Sandyford CC, requested the use of the school's old cricket square in its sports grounds in Milltown. In return, he and others from the club would assist in coaching any CUS lads interested in the game.

"It would certainly be nice," he wrote, "to see CUS not only back in the ranks but competing with and beating the best of them."

The wheels of revival were set in motion. The school is now dominant in Leinster, winning numerous cups at all age levels in the last decade. Victory in the 1998 Leinster Senior Cup saw the trophy return to Leeson Street for the first time in almost half a century.

Tonge recalls the 1998 final: "It was special because so much hard work had gone in and just to achieve the pinnacle was very, very special for everybody involved. We had good teams before but we never had gone that one step further."

The silver-polish budget has grown exponentially since then.

"It's great to be good and to be respected. I don't think I'd use any word more than respected. We're strong and we're respected. It's good to have a good, solid reputation but we're not sitting on it."

Cricket is a brief punctuation in the final school term of the year, a mere whisper of six or eight weeks in late spring. As such, it is an intense flurry of ball and bat. Jennings encourages lads to play through summer with clubs, though distractions beyond the crease can make this problematical.

"We encourage them to join clubs so there's a level of continuity. But I've noticed in recent years that development has been interrupted maybe by the new wealth in the country because children tend to spend more time in organised camps or away for the summer with their parents."

Money may turn heads from a summer with Merrion or Railway Union, but few demur when presented with the opportunity of a transition-year exchange in the propitious cricket climes of South Africa. Four students participate each year. One past beneficiary is the Ireland international Eoin Morgan.

Morgan was a "phenom", a scorching, flame-haired batsman from his earliest days in CUS. He became Ireland's youngest senior international at 16, while still in school. Tonge recalls his extraordinary precocity.

"He nearly won a senior match for us against Wesley College when he was an under-13. He was really outstanding. It's a great honour to see a past-pupil do as well as Eoin has been doing. It did create an added interest in the World Cup games last year."

Morgan returned to the school last June, in the wake of Ireland's gatecrashing success in the Caribbean, leaving as a calling card a jersey signed by the World Cup panel. It hangs framed with proud prominence in the school office, catching the eye at once.

The sport had never felt the gaze of Irish eyes as it did for those heady few weeks last spring. Cricket, for long the most obscure of the garrison games, was embraced, briefly, in pubs and offices and homes countrywide. A fillip, surely, for the sport in CUS?

"It was quite bizarre," says Tonge. "I've never seen such an impact: people playing cricket on village greens, which you never saw. It did have a massive impact in the school. I've never seen anything like it. It just proves that a successful international team does raise the level of sport everywhere else. All the kids were talking about it. It sort of made cricket a more mainstream game. Cricket was very much regarded as a Cinderella sport. It was certainly the biggest fillip for cricket in Ireland ever."

Another summary (if not necessarily summery) school cricket season lies ahead, as the school seeks to maintain the high standards it has set for itself.

Let the googlies and the leg breaks commence.

BASIC FACTS - Catholic University School, Leeson St, Dublin 2

Founded:1867

Number of pupils:460

Sports played:Cricket, rugby, tennis, athletics

School sports colours:(Aside from cricket whites) red, white and sky blue

Major recent sporting honours:The school has won four Leinster Senior Cricket Cups since 2003 and a further eight provincial titles since 2000 in lower age categories

Notable past pupils (non-sport):Comedy writer Graham Linehan; theatre director Joe Dowling

Notable sporting past pupils:Ronnie Delany, 1956 Olympics 1,500m gold medallist; cricketer Eoin Morgan of Ireland and Middlesex