Ashes Cricket on Bloomsday

The planets aligning – or a cosmic joke?

So, the eagerly anticipated first Ashes Test starts today – Bloomsday. For the uninitiated, the Ashes is the age-old tussle between two of the world’s great cricket powers – England and Australia – over “the ashes of English cricket”. (According to legend, a burnt bail from Australia’s first win on English soil, in 1882, is contained in the famous urn. Talk of the two teams competing for what has been described as a glorified ashtray can be described as uncharitable.)

Nowadays, another nation from the former British Empire – India – is making much of the noise in the world of cricket (and paying easily the highest salaries), in the form of the hard-hitting Indian Premier League, the IPL. But the Ashes still has its allure. England cricket fans with long memories (including this writer) recall fondly the team’s historic series win in 2005, which included what is regarded as one of the greatest Test matches of all time – when England beat Australia by just two runs, and Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff went to commiserate with a dejected Brett Lee at the non-striker’s end.

A little over a week ago, by way of a curtain-raiser, Ireland played England at Lord’s in a one-off, four-day Test. To say that the teams were mismatched would be an understatement. Among other things, Ireland’s provincial system has not been in operation since the pandemic – and many members of the team have played little first-class cricket, let alone international matches. When Ireland slumped to 172 all out, and England posted a mammoth 524 for 4 in reply, laying waste to an inexperienced Ireland bowling attack, the writing appeared to be on the wall.

But then, something remarkable happened. An Ireland fightback. In their second innings, a fourth-wicket partnership of 63 between Harry Tector and Lorcan Tucker (as Emma John noted in the Guardian, the names themselves have the makings of a Netflix series), followed by a monumental 163 for the seventh wicket between Andy McBrine and Mark “Red” Adair, made England bat again to secure victory – something that had seemed unlikely , to say the least, at the start of the day’s play.

As the man said, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Well, the man was wrong: there’s no shame in losing to a better team; it’s not putting up a fight that’s inexcusable. Certainly Ireland lost, and heavily (the match was completed within three days, rather than the scheduled four), but they gave it their best shot, and looked like they belonged. And thanks to the ever-excellent TV coverage from Sky Sports, Irish cricket has had a much-needed boost to its international profile. In the years ahead, recent arrivals to these shores, in particular those of South Asian descent, are likely to play a leading part in Ireland’s efforts to rise up the Test rankings.

The first day of the first Ashes Test match of the series falls on Bloomsday. It would be nice to think that this was no coincidence: that the powers-that-be at the England & Wales Cricket Board, and their Australian counterparts, had a sense of humour, and that the match would fittingly mark the feast-day of Ireland’s secular literary saint. More likely, they have little clue what – let along when – Bloomsday is.

No matter. There it is: one of sport’s greatest contests starts on the day when we remember one of Ireland’s greatest authors. What would James Joyce have made of it all? Who knows. But when Ulysses was published, he was pleased with all the attention, but also commented wryly: “Nobody said how funny the book is.” It would be nice to think that, for a man with a well-developed sense of the absurd, he would have been tickled pink.

So if you happen to be at Edgbaston today, and see a tall, angular man near the boundary rope, carrying a cane, wearing a thick pair of spectacles and eating a kidney or two out of a picnic hamper that has seen better days, don’t call security. Say hello. We’re here to stay.

A footnote and a postscript

Another great Irish writer was evidently not a fan. George Bernard Shaw described cricket as “a game played by eleven fools and watched by eleven thousand fools”. Elsewhere, he commented: “The English are not a very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.”

The Ashes urn itself does not change hands, but remains in the MCC Museum at Lord’s. Instead, the winning captain is presented with a replica – made by the storied Irish company Waterford Crystal.