How Did You Get Into Cricket ?

Strumms

So, a sport that historically hasn’t featured much in the general Irish consciousness till very or quite recently, historically an outlier really, however that again is up till recently but is widely considered the fastest growing Irish sport in terms of participation firstly and the interest levels seem to be at an all time high also..

Growing up as a kid in the summer in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s I’d hate the prospect of test match cricket on the BBC. An intolerable interruption from ‘good telly’ with these bedecked whitened men and their rituals and boring most certainly it was and it goes on for hours, days and …. Awhhh …Not cricket. ! What’s it all about? And that guy, it hits his leg, he’s going out or off and silly mid on is a silly name for a fella standing there, hey ? what just happened ….this happened…no idea.

i went to visit my aunt and uncle in Windsor, my aunt an Irish lady and still is thankfully was married to an old English gent, my Uncle Johnny…. One day he called me the 12 year old Dublin lad inside to his study and in a way behind and belying his standoffishness took great interest in schooling me on the sport… we bonded and he enabled me with information and a love of cricket…as did those players playing.

the kicker was ,… before he left, he gave me this…

Hundreds of pages and articles on grounds, players, teams, venues, competitions, tonnes of statistics as well as brilliantly insightful opinion pieces and so forth..and the photos, wow..

I was beyond interested, intrigued and soon very much not just in love with this strange complex and multifaceted and varied phenomenon but loving being obsessed by it and with it…this obsession continues..unabashed.

always been football mad but I’d miss the cup final before an ashes game or any import test….

so what got you into, what exposed you to, what enabled your love and enjoyment of cricket ??

salmocab

I broke my hand one summer when I was about 20 and it coincided with a World Cup, mate had a month off for some reason and I used to mooch up to his house to watch matches, I don’t follow it too much in fairness but watch the occasional bit when I can, went to a couple of games in Australia when I was there.

Fr Tod Umptious

I worked in England in a hotel in the summer of 1989.

I stay in the hotel staff accomodation and my flatmate was English and enjoyed the game.

Started watching it then, the 1989 Ashes tour.

The next few summers I was back in England working in pubs and it would be on TV in the pub during the day so I watched a lot of it.

Have enjoyed watching it since.

onlyonpaper

Strumms; U have triggered something this morn that takes me back so many years. Living in a very rural area in West of Ireland radio was a godsend for some communication with outside world. Even at that, sport in the mid fifties was confined to GAA on Sundays and Grand National. It was then I discovered Cricket on BBC test match special with the fantastic commentator John Arlott.

There was tours by the great West Indies teams of the 3Ws as they were known, Gary Sobers, the wonderfully named Seymore Nurse and bowlers like Ramadhin and Valentine about whom they a Calypso song. The weird and wonderful field placings like forward short leg, silly mid on and 3rd man even if there was no 1st or 2nd man. They described bowling bouncers and googlies, left arm over the wicket and right hand round the wicket. Trying to gradually piece it all together in my mind with Arlott's help of course.

Then came the 70s and we could afford a TV but had to resort to illegal deflectors scattered along the border to get British channels.There was cricket in all its glory actually remarkably close to what I imagined down the years but the mystery was gone. However the love of the game that made a part of rural life of youth more bearable remained and new greats came to be revered like Botham, Richards, Tendulker, Ponting and the wonderfully exciting Gilchrist and in the bowling world the fantastic Shane Warne. Good time to bring this rambling to a close to say to Shane...thanks for the memories and you will never be forgotten