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Cricket Ireland President Robin Walsh’s Diary tells of his return to the emerald isle from Bangladesh, the end of the Irish Women’s World Twenty20 Campaign and the Leinster Cricket Club Annual Dinner.
It wasn’t so much the distance, more the lack of connections, that made the journey from door to door – more precisely, Bangladesh to Co Down – such an epic one. Three days all told if you include an overnight in Dublin to take in the Leinster Club dinner at Rathmines where my speech nearly sent me to sleep never mind anybody else.

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The plan was to leave Sylhet on Tuesday after the women’s last group game against Pakistan. Couldn’t happen until lunchtime Wednesday so overnight in Dhaka; overnight Thursday in Dubai; Dublin lunchtime Friday; overnight in Dublin 6; Belfast lunchtime Saturday. I had taken my leave of the women’s team after four successive defeats and had made do with a ball by ball website commentary in Dubai for the 9th/10th play off against Bangladesh. Maybe just as well. I’d seen at first hand the huge disappointment of defeat over the past 10 days. I can only imagine the reaction to the Bangladesh defeat when victory had been a real hope. Too upsetting: what with the men, think I’d had my share of close-up heartache. My amiable travelling companion, the media manager Barry Chambers, whose nickname “The Excellent“ was of my doing, and I raised a glass and reminded ourselves Ireland was the only Associate to have teams in both tournaments.

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Our complicated travel arrangements allowed me first hand insight into the remarkable activities of Cricket Ireland’s International Teams Administrator , Suzanne Kenealy. It takes a cool head and not a little skill to organise life for all the players from senior to underage; male/female, particularly when – as in the men’s case – you don’t know when it’s going to be time to go home. Add to that, the job of women’s team manager in Bangladesh and all the minute detail it entails. Patience required as you wait for hours after a match has ended for random players’ drug testing to be completed; more of the same when you are responsible for alerting the security forces outside the hotel entrance when any member of the squad wants to leave the premises. I was delighted to pay tribute to Sue at the Leinster Club dinner and to the four players who play their club cricket at Rathmines – sister Amy, Eimear Richardson, Laura Delany and Rebecca Rolfe.

The four Ireland Women’s representatives from Leinster Cricket Club.

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Too many old friends to mention at the Leinster dinner where fine wine and food was much enjoyed despite travel fatigue. Club president Bob Cramp knew the feeling well as a frequent visitor to Bangladesh before his retirement from the oil industry. Was delighted that Leinster Union president Henry Tighe had not yet departed for a family holiday in France – all 21 of them. It allowed me to thank him for the gracious manner in which I have been received in his patch over the past 12 months.

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Two new found friends had my undivided attention given common interests of poker on the one hand and the cricket grounds of Buckinghamshire on the other. It may seem bizarre – but maybe a stroke of genius – to have a professional poker player as your club treasurer but that’s what you find in David
Lappin. For seven year now he’s played the tables of Dublin and mainland Europe as well as the internet; working, as he puts it, a six-day week. I asked – off the record! – what the single most successful and most unsuccessful night of his career had been so far and I’m delighted to report that the former outstripped the latter by some distance. We discussed what he considered his skills were as he pitted his wits in tournaments against fellow professionals in Ireland, of whom there are about 100, and abroad. He didn’t give too much away, but left me in no doubt it was a very different league from that which I enjoyed years ago when the rain was falling outside the dressing room window.

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But it was literally the same league when I discovered that last year’s captain of Leinster Seconds, Jason Nagle, played much of his cricket in the delightful environs of the Chalfonts in the Chiltrens of Buckinghamshire. I played most of the 1980s for Chalfont St Giles – famous for the cottage in which John Milton finished his epic poem, Paradise Lost – and Jason played a decade later for the neighbouring village of Chalfont St Peter. Different times but it was a pleasant surprise to reminisce about village grounds, pubs and many mutual acquaintances.Happy memories….

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Crawfordsburn in time for the three big Heineken Cup games. Brilliant start with Munster, but downhill thereafter with Ulster and Leinster. Found a little consolation in the Ulster defeat given that two of my grandsons are members of Saracans. It’s the day after the game and they’re now here for an Easter holiday. Did they really have to arrive wearing their Sarrie fezzes?

Robin Walsh
With Suzanne Kenealy in Sylhet
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Connaught