Cricket’s profile in this country has changed beyond recognition over the last few years and it’s been a very favourable change too. The term garrison game is whispered rather than bandied these days and it’s a sign of things that President McAleese teased Queen Elizabeth about our cricketers beating her cricketers on her recent visit here and that people were amused rather than mystified by the comment. With the increase in standards in terms of players and player development it’s noticeable too that the game here has polarised slightly between the weekend recreational cricketer seeking a junior medal and the senior game that can lead to professional contracts in the English county game and even in two cases, Ed Joyce and Eoin Morgan, recognition at the highest level with England.
Against this backdrop I am writing a few lines to celebrate my own club, Civil Service Cricket Club, and its 150Anniversary which will take place this summer. You can barely credit that this little club, situated in Phoenix Park, has lasted so long and, for the most part, prospered. In our time in the game any number of clubs have started, grown, reached the peaks and disbanded but the ‘Service has just kept rolling along. My own theory is that pretty much from the off we played in Service for fun rather than silverware.
We started in 1863, our first big game against the Lord Lieutenant’s XI on the lawn in the Vice Regal Lodge, a ground that has since disappeared. The Earl of Carlisle, then Lord Lieutenant, had decided that his public servants needed some rest and recreation, so he gave us a few acres near the Dog Pond, where we have been ever since. There were conditions attached – an annual ground rent of 5d per annum, and an obligation on members to maintain a fence around the ground. Oddly enough a picture of a Civil Service XI taken in the Vice Regal lodge in 1863 came to light – the Service XI look a parcel of rogues but that may have been the current vogue.
It’s a surprising fact but cricket was a big game in Ireland in the nineteenth century – every hill and hamlet had its own cricket team and there were seven cricket grounds operating in Phoenix Park at that time, including a public ground close to the current American Embassy that was in constant use.
Civil Service would have had the full complement of the mainly ascendancy public sector from which to attract players but while we provided the Ireland team with George Penny in the late 1860s our results were patchy, mainly because all matches were played on Saturdays and all public servants were then obliged to work Saturday mornings. As a result we rarely had a full eleven at the start of play. Our reputation for hospitality, and the club opening its doors to non civil servants, helped us to prosper. Our old wooden pavilion even had a cellar bar called the Black Hole of Calcutta that helped retained membership, often till all hours.
Like most clubs there were fallow periods and the darker days too. The Edwardian era was a good time for us, we had three Irish internationals, George Morrow, Paddy Murphy and George Christian and for a season or two our resources stretched to a club pro, Lockwood, who drank too well but not too wisely.
At that time there were still a large number of clubs in Ireland, the beginnings of a league structure and plenty of country house cricket but post war the rapid rise of the GAA did for most clubs and the establishment of a proper Senior League in Leinster stretched Civil Service’s resources. We played in Senior 1 for nearly 20 years but in truth Civil Service’s heart was never in it. Legend has it too that a rift developed between the club’s public service and its private sector members when a red tabbed official from the then Department of Finance turned up in the pavilion and quoted an arcane regulation that restricted access to the bar to its public sector members. We had the bones of a good side that would have been pushing for a league win a couple of years on but an exodus followed. Our best players gone and wins next to impossible to come by we left Senior 1 in the early forties. It’s probably as well that we did, given our resources and our natural inclination to the more relaxed game.
Another peak in our fortunes took place in the 1960s when we won the Senior 2 cup and we were the top of the tree in terms of junior clubs.
By the time I joined in the early 1980s we were in another trough, despite the efforts of Noel Marks, our best player, and one of the best players ever to play for Civil Service. We called him the King and he called his bat Betsy. Our best bowler, our best batsman, our best fielder, he played and we looked on. At one stage we were down to a bare membership of 22 but thanks to an influx of people like myself from Walkinstown, the addition of a few keen young kids including Owen Butler who later went on to represent Ireland, and the fact that we were one of the first clubs to readily embrace the new immigrant population generated by the Celtic Tiger, we again prospered. As it happened we again reached the top ranks of the junior clubs and mid noughties we even played a couple of games at senior 1. We did not have a pro to speak of but we acquitted ourselves well on and off the pitch.
At this point the Black Hole of Calcutta is a distant memory. It’s a sign of the times that at club barbeques there’s a strong smell of Indian barbeque chicken and that we always dip slightly during Ramadan. We still have a pavilion in one of the most scenic spots in Dublin and we continue to be a friendly club. Even to those that know, cricket is the most technically challenging ad infuriating of games but, much like golf it provides an endless source of anecdote and speculation. Whether it’s by accident or not we still attract a membership that revels in these anecdotes and speculation and who love the game for its rites and ritual. For this reason and so many others it’s a club that I love and it’s a club that, on its 150anniversary , should be congratulated and revered.