Wonder of Bangalore will not be forgotten

SIDELINE CUT:Somehow a Chinese whisper spread across the country that an extraordinary sporting feat was taking place on this humdrum Wednesday afternoon and that it was starring Irishmen, writes KEITH DUGGAN

SO THE Emerald Isle was hit for six, and regardless of your feelings about cricket there can be no denying the heroics of the Irish cricket team in faraway Bangalore made this country feel better itself, if only for a while.

“They” say sport is a great tonic and all that, but who would have guessed in these dark days that the quintessential English village game – “organised loafing” as a former Archbishop of Canterbury so wonderfully described it – should be the game that would lift Ireland out of the post-election blues?

It will be impossible to get an accurate tally of just how many Irish men and women loyally sat down at the beginning of Ireland’s Group B match with England intent on enjoying an afternoon of bowling and wicket-keeping, regardless of the result. But because most people were working and many more were unaware the game was even taking place, it is safe to assume the figure was low – maybe not much more than Ireland’s total innings.

Yet somehow a Chinese whisper spread across the country that an extraordinary sporting feat was taking place on this humdrum Wednesday afternoon and that it was starring Irishmen.

It must have been four o’clock when a text came through from a friend, someone whose range of interests ranged from bad punk music to cooking without ever referencing cricket. But he was adamant this cricket match was history in the making and it soon became apparent he was glued to the match and he proceeded to send updates every minute.

For thousands of people who heard about the game as it was happening and managed to catch the climactic moments, not knowing much about cricket didn’t matter. The mere possibility of Ireland beating England at anything more than made up for a lack of appreciation of the subtleties. And anyway, as the highlights that night confirmed, there was nothing really subtle about the way that Ireland went about achieving what must be considered one of the great international sporting moments in the history of the country.

Kevin O’Brien’s batting performance was chock-a-block with the kind of crowd-pleasing belters a novice could enjoy: several of his sixes were so flamboyant he looked like Ted Williams or one of the baseball sluggers of old sending one in to the sky at Fenway Park.

But it was a blink-and-you-miss it event: a rumour that was only confirmed as fact for most people by tea time. By the time the realisation something special was happening – radio DJs interrupting their afternoon hit parade to let listeners know, publicans flicking through the sports channels, truck drivers scanning for Radio Five Live, Labour and Fine Gael breaking away from crucial talks – the match was going though its last motions.

Someone should make a documentary about the afternoon in years to come because unlike, say, the epic Euro ’88 football match against England, the country did not come to a standstill. The country hardly blinked, and it took hours to absorb the significance of the win.

By that evening, though, its magnificence was beginning to sink in.

Chief among the cheerleaders was George Hook. Everyone knows there is a bit of the Iron John about Hookie: that he is not afraid to unleash the inner man, and he was unabashed and defiant on his radio show when he announced, much like Violet Elizabeth, that he was going to cry about this cricket win.

Still, nobody could question Hook’s depth of feeling about both the win and Irish cricket in general as he talked about his father teaching him to bowl in Bishopstown and later talking passionately about cricket’s place in Irish sporting culture.

And it did seem as though some appreciation of the old game might have been lying dormant in Irish souls for quite a long time. In the opening pages of The GAA: A People's History, there is a wonderful, double-page photograph of a cricket scene from what might be Shropshire, except that is east Galway. The accompanying quotation, from the Nenagh Guardianreads: "The English game of cricket is very much in vogue in Ireland. It has completely displaced the old athletic exercise of hurling some years ago. Hurling is almost unknown to the rising generation . . . every town and village, every hamlet and populous nook has either its (cricket) club or is in connection with some neighbouring one".

Well, that much has changed. But even if the game survived only in hardy pockets, perhaps an inherent appreciation of its skill and beauty has not been completely wiped out. Certainly, the general joy at the mere idea of Ireland out-batting England suggested as much. By Thursday, Kevin O'Brien, complete with pink-rinse hair-do, was on the front of every newspaper in the land. By lunchtime, everyone was talking about the fantastic result. The improbability of it cheered people. And the sun came out! And by Thursday afternoon, John Kelly opened up his afternoon show on Lyric FM with Soul Limboby Booker T and the MGs – or the jaunty BBC2 cricket tune, if you prefer.

And other oblique Irish cricket connections came to mind. Wasn't it two Irishmen – Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh – who composed an entire album, The Duckworth Lewis Method, as a kind of ode to the glory and daftness of cricket?

And wasn’t it an Irishman, Joseph O’Neill, who wrote the most celebrated (and the only) tragic-cricket novel masterpiece of recent years, exploring the dream of cricket as a thriving sport in New York City rather than what it is: an underground game played on the margins and found only on portable television sets in ethnic cafes. Wasn’t Michael Cusack a cricket man? Aren’t the English recruiting the best of Ireland’s cricketers? And if there was a touch of condescension about Geoff Boycott’s referring to the Irish team as “you leprechauns”, wasn’t it still something that original Yorkshire curmudgeon was delivering a congratulations across the Irish Sea?

In fact, such was the sheer thrill and improbability of O’Brien’s century and the subsequent show of nerve from Trent Johnson and John Mooney that even the Sky commentators were more excited for the underdogs than they were worried about England. This was Ireland beating England at the most English of games.

So perhaps this win revived memories of a half-forgotten pursuit in this country. There may well be stored in many attics across Ireland old cricket bats and balls that have lain in disuse since the boyhood of grandfathers long gone. And if those clubs which have continued to exist through the years when cricket has become increasingly marginalised in this country ever needed encouragement, this was it.

That Ireland is a mere “associate” member of the ICC and may not even qualify for the next World Cup made Wednesday’s upset all the more delicious. It seemed like a strike for the underdogs everywhere, and it will guarantee tomorrow’s match against India will get the full national patriotic treatment. But regardless of what happens to Ireland in the rest of the tournament, the wonder of Wednesday won’t be forgotten.

Kevin O’Brien’s 100 may have been the fastest of all time, but it seems as if Ireland has been waiting a century to see it.