The West Indies play Ireland in three One-Day Internationals at Clontarf this week, on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Based on the most recent results between the teams, the tourists may feel like they have a score to settle.
The last ODI series was in Kingston, Jamaica, in January 2022, when Ireland came from behind to win 2-1. Later that year, at the T20 World Cup, Ireland hammered the same opponents at Hobart, winning by nine wickets with 15 balls to spare. In other words, Ireland have won their past three games against the West Indies.
A bizarre state of affairs? Perhaps only to those who grew up watching cricket during the 1970s and 1980s. With their combination of exhilarating stroke-play and lethal fast bowling, the West Indies not only won the first two cricketing world cups, in 1975 and ’79. They broadened cricket’s appeal.
In retrospect, Irish cricket fans were blessed that most international teams touring England saw fit to take mid-tour breaks here, where they played exhibition games against Ireland teams consisting of worthy amateurs.
My first close-up of the Windies was in the summer of 1976. Getting Deryck Murray’s autograph was an opportunity to ask him who he rated as the world’s quickest bowler. “Michael Holding,” he said. How thrilling to see Holding limber up on the outfield at Rathmines that day – and how disappointing to learn that he was being rested against Ireland.
Four years later, the Windies were back in Dublin and this time Holding played. I skipped school exams to witness that marvellously long and athletic run-up, from the car-park end – the same turf we had played on, only weeks previously! But what was it like for Ireland’s weekend cricketers to watch Holding actually gliding towards them, about to unleash another thunderbolt?
For Jack Short, one of Ireland’s best batsmen pre-professionalism, the greater danger came from a young Malcolm Marshall, who was trying to force himself into the West Indies Test team and therefore had reason to impress.
“Marshall ran in really fast and it was pretty scary at the time,” recalls Short. “The light had deteriorated and we probably shouldn’t have been out there – but there was a big crowd in Clontarf so it was as though we were probably obliged to help them put on a show.
The sight of Marshall, seen here in action against England in 1988, running in to bowl was always a worrying one for any batsman
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“I generally didn’t mind facing quick bowling but Marshall bowled one short ball at me that I only just about managed to avoid. The ball may have brushed my beard as it zipped past. I remember my opening partner Michael Reith coming down the pitch, saying ‘Are you alright, Jack? You’ve turned a bit green.’”
Short and his team-mates used to squirm when anyone in the media reminded the tourists about Sion Mills and 1969, when a physically exhausted and less celebrated West Indian team were bowled out for 25 on a quagmire of a pitch. Why antagonise the tourists by bringing that up?
Far worse was the welcome speech by Irish Cricket Union president Dixon Rose in 1984, when he congratulated the Rathmines ground staff and said that “they must have worked like blacks” to have the ground looking so well. This was at lunch on the first day of a two-day game. The Ireland players didn’t know where to look.
“I just remember some of the West Indies players banging their cutlery on the table to show their disapproval,” says Alan Lewis, who was making his Ireland debut that day. “Their team manager, Clyde Walcott, made a very calm, eloquent response. Over a century since the abolition of slavery, he said, their cricket team was living proof of what can be achieved with equal opportunity.
“They were everybody’s favourite team back then. I was in awe of Desmond Haynes – I even named my house ‘Haynesville’ in his honour. But they were all so impressive, so professional. Clive Lloyd (their captain) had transformed them from calypso cricketers into serial winners, who still played beautiful cricket.”
Lewis played against the Windies on their next visit, in 1991, when a huge crowd turned out at Downpatrick – the BBC highlights package available on YouTube show fans perched in trees, Antigua-style. The clips also show the tourists in relaxed mode, their opponents desperate to put on a brave show – this was still 16 years before Ireland’s first appearance at a world cup, 18 years before professional contracts were introduced.
The day was memorable for 23-year-old Conor Hoey, the Irish leg-spinner who dismissed one Brian Charles Lara third ball. “I don’t think anyone knew who he was at that stage,” says Hoey. “He hadn’t broken through at that point. But it’s there in the scorebook!
“It was the biggest crowd we’d played in front of so there were butterflies as we went out. I was thinking damage limitation. If I remember correctly, Stephen Warke’s team talk was along the lines of: Just enjoy yourselves, lads. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Let’s do our best.”
There isn’t enough space here to explain the gradual decline of West Indian cricket and it’s too simplistic to attribute Ireland’s rise purely to the exposure some players got to English county cricket, combined with an influx of southern hemisphere talent in the noughties. But by 2004, the picture had changed dramatically.
Ireland’s Kyle McCallan, centre, celebrates after catching Dwayne Smith during the 2004 victory over West Indies
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That year Ireland had a momentous six-wicket victory over the Windies in Stormont, when Jason Molins and Jeremy Bray were the stars; a young Eoin Morgan wasn’t even required to bat.
This wasn’t an official ODI, and is listed on Cricinfo merely as a ‘tour match’. There were no such caveats attached to Ireland victory in Nelson at the 2015 Cricket World Cup, when Paul Stirling, Ed Joyce and Niall O’Brien all helped to chase down the West Indies 305/7 with more than four overs to spare.
And here we are, 10 years on – Ireland ranked 12th in the ODI world rankings, West Indies 9th. The picture for Irish cricket is dramatically different from the 1980s, but still far from perfect.
The national team is still playing games at Clontarf and Malahide, while Cricket Ireland continues its plans to have stadium ready in Abbotstown by the end of the decade. It begs questions of CI’s talent production system that the three new additions to the squad for these games – Tom Mayes, Cade Carmichael and Liam McCarthy – all learned their cricket in South Africa.
It hardly helps that the national team plays so infrequently on Irish soil – the ‘summer programme’ consists of these ODIs, three T20s against the Windies in Derry next month and three more against England in Malahide in September.
All of which adds to the players’ motivation to succeed this week. According to Andy Balbirnie, a veteran of Nelson, the West Indies won’t strike awe in the way that they used to.
“When I started, I remember that feeling of: Oh my God, that’s Chris Gayle walking out to bat against us,” says Balbirnie. “But I don’t think that fear factor is there any more because we play the big teams so regularly.
“I know from talking to my dad what it means to his generation when we go well against the West Indies because they were so dominant for so long. But you look at our recent record against them, especially with that series win in Jamaica. The more we play against them, the more normal it seems.”