Sports' history is a much neglected subject which is now, deservedly, gaining academic credibility as it has, of course, much to tell us about the social, economic and political times, which research into its chosen subjects reveals.
This important book is no exception, as Tom Hunt, himself a teacher and former Waterford County footballer, covers much new ground and challenges many pre conceived notions about a wide range of sports. Cricket has twenty eight pages to itself, as well as making numerous other appearances. However Hunt covers a wide range of pastimes.
I will concentrate on cricket but was fascinated by the whole study, even though I have few other sporting interests apart from Rugby.
Most previous studies of Irish cricket history have seen the game as having been well established in all parts of the country during the nineteenth century, and have traced its subsequent decline to the activities of the Land League destroying landlord tenant relationships and to the rise of the GAA with its ban on participation in "foreign and fantastic field sports".
Thus, for example Pat Hone, in his "Cricket in Ireland " refers to the cricketing background of Parnell and Michael Cusack and then, adapting the words of definite non cricketer Oscar Wilde, suggests that "Each man killed the thing he loved."
More recent writers, including the redoubtable Gerard Siggins - and on a far narrower canvas, this reviewer - have followed this seemingly logical deduction.
However Hunt successfully challenges this assumption. Following recent studies by Patrick Bracken and Michael O'Dwyer for cricket in Tipperary and Kilkenny he shows that this, in County Westmeath at least, was, most emphatically, not what happened.
In Westmeath, landlord tenant relations remained good and land agitation was minimal. Cricket, if anything, grew in popularity in the later years of the century and was far from being the exclusive pastime of the military and the "West British."
By far the most popular game in the country, its player base included many farm labourers who made up the majortiy of those participating in more than one hundred clubs during the 1890s. Some of these sides were transitory or "one offs" but others were more permanent, a number fielding two elevens. Clonlost, in 1899, were able to put three teams into the field, one a Junior XI.
The decline, when it came in the early years of the 20th Century, had more to do with the military turning to football and the landed gentry finding tennis and polo more to their taste.
Interestingly, though Hunt does not refer to it, the former Dublin University and Ireland all rounder Ernest Ensor made writing the chapter on Irish cricket in the monumental "Imperial Cricket" (1913) saw polo as one of the main threats to the irish game.
Ensor was, one suspects writing mainly about Dublin, but his comments offers support to Hunt's thesis. Hunt further argues that the growth of cultural nationalism, though the Gaelic Revival also had an impact, with its emphasis on Celtic traditions.
However, he shows that even then cricket was not lost. As late as the 1920s, a genrerally difficult time for Irish cricket, seven teams took part in a league in the county. Cricketers had also had a part to play in the formation and development of hurling in the county, the two games, though widely different, requiring not disimilar skills. Some cricket clubs formed the basis of the GAA ones which replaced them.
The foregoing is only a taster of what Hunt has to say about cricket. He also, as stated above, covers numerous other sports, often with with equally important results.
His book is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in Irish cricket, sport and/or history.
It may not always be an easy read, but as Neville Cardus, doyen of all cricket writers, claimed the Lancashire batsman JT Tyldsley said of his county's cricket, "If the public doesn't like it.the public needs educating up to it."
Edward Liddle
Sport and Society in Victorian Ireland: The Case of County Westmeath by Tom Hunt is published by Cork University Press, 2008
