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Ger Siggins takes a look back at the History of Ireland versus England, one that extends back a lot further than the recent history since the inaugural One Day International at Stormont in 2006.
Cricket Ireland’s series of articles continues to build up to the biggest cricket match ever to come to Ireland, the RSA Challenge, which sees Ireland play England at the new international ground in Malahide on September 3rd. Every week, cricketireland.ie will have a different guest author writing about something relating to one of cricket’s oldest rivalries. This week with just 6 weeks to go, it’s renowned Irish cricket writer and historian Ger Siggins

As we ready ourselves to welcome the best fifty-over England players to help us open the new national stadium in Malahide with a gala RSA Challenge, we can look back on our own cricket history which is almost three centuries old. There is a theory that cricket is an Irish game, a gentrified off-shoot of hurling, but most acknowledge a debt to the English for exporting their sport both here and across the globe.

But one of the great mysteries of Ireland’s long cricket history is just why there have been so few fixtures against our distinguished near neighbour.

While all the test nations have visited our shores – and several sent away with a flea in their ear – from England’s first international against Australia it took 129 years to finally get around to playing us.

There has been no disgrace for Ireland in any of the defeats in the ODIs here in 2006, 2009 or 2011, or in the 2007 ICC World Cup, or the rained-off game at the 2010 ICC World Twenty20.

And of course there was glory a-plenty in the Miracle of Bangalore when Kevin O’Brien destroyed Andrew Strauss’s team with a 50-ball century, with no little help from Alex Cusack and John Mooney.

But while those games are part of the recent past, the cricket historian might be puzzled by a series of three games that took place long before the Ashes were first incinerated. In September 1855 the Gentlemen of Ireland took on the Gentlemen of England at the Phoenix Park, a fixture recognised by Cricket Ireland as the first for which it awarded caps.

The Irish (96 and 105) beat England (56 and 38) by 107 runs, but in no way should it be regarded as representative of either side’s cricketing population. Only around half the English team actually travelled across the Irish Sea – the rest of the side was made up of Englishmen living in Dublin – and none of the XI, who mostly came from Oxford and Cambridge universities, were prominent players. The best known was RA Fitzgerald, who served for many years as secretary of MCC and, because he came from Irish stock, played for Ireland against MCC on several visits to Lord’s.

There were two more games, in 1856 (Ireland 45 and 108 lost to England 97 and 95) and 1857 (Ireland 132 and 195 drew with England 70 and 14-3), the latter played in the Rotunda Gardens, or what is now Parnell Square.

The game was starting to take off both in England and Ireland, and the next two decades would see the high-water mark for the game here. It is inevitable that many of those who played were pioneers of the sport.

One of the most important figures in the development of the game here was Charles Lawrence, who took 18 wickets in the 1856 and 1857 fixtures. He was a Londoner who helped to spread the game in both Scotland and Ireland, the latter when he was professional at Phoenix throughout the 1850s. He later emigrated to Australia where he is credited with introducing cricket coaching to Sydney. He returned to these shores in 1868 as manager of the Aborigines team. Peter Doyle, who played for the Ireland side, was an “entirely self-taught cricketer” from Borris, Co. Carlow who was the leading full-time Irish professional for most of the 1850s and 1860s.

Perhaps smarting from that first defeat, the 1856 Gents of England brought a much stronger side to Dublin. Three of the famous Walker family of Southgate came, including the best of them all, Edward, then a teenager but later the chief rival of WG Grace in the 1860s. The seven brothers helped found Middlesex CCC and from the club’s formation in 1860 to the 1920s a Walker was either captain or president of the county.

The final game in this triptych of pioneering fixtures ended with Ireland getting the best of a draw. Again the English side was affected by three late non-travellers, Lord Royston, Frederick Bathurst and the Hon. Spencer Ponsonby (Surrey) – and Ireland allowed Marshall, “a splendid long stop” to play for England.

There was a heavy side bet on the result – reported in the newspapers as £1,000 a side – and the Gents of Ireland were unlucky not to collect. This was pre-declarations and Ireland batted almost all the second day for 195, by far the record innings total at the time. England had only an hour to bat and lost three wickets.

There was a huge crowd of over 2,000 people at the second day’s play, “including most of the nobility and gentry of Dublin”, as well as the Lord Lieutenant, Earl Spencer, great-great-great-grandfather of Princess Diana.

That was the end of the Gentlemen of England’s visits, though the spirit of the fixture probably continued on – and with many of the same players – in the more-formalised games with MCC and I Zingari which lasted many years.

England began its international rivalry 20 years later in the Melbourne Cricket Ground and later added South Africa and all the sides that now call themselves Full Members of the International Cricket Council. Ireland, being part of the United Kingdom until 1922, never got a chance to take on the old rival and after independence the game here just was not strong enough, meandering along as a sort of Minor-County-With-Benefits until joining ICC twenty years ago this month.

It’s been a long time coming, and we’re yet to be treated as equals, but we can now stand toe-to-toe and, as long as they don’t recruit too many Irish-born players before September 3rd, can reasonably expect to give England a tough game.

Gerard Siggins is author of four books on Irish cricket, including ‘Green Days, Cricket in Ireland 1792-2005’.

You can follow him on Twitter here @Siggo

It is just 6 weeks to the RSA Challenge at Malahide

Ger Siggins
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