SCHOOL REPORT BELVEDERE COLLEGE: Richard Fitzpatrickvisits a school in search of its 34th Leinster Senior Cup title in the short - but intense - school cricket season
DURING A state visit, former British Prime Minister John Major, a noted cricket enthusiast, tried to explain the charm of England's national game to George Bush Snr. Apparently, the American president's "eyes swivelled when he realised that a match could last five days yet still not produce a winner."
To the uninitiated, there is something impenetrable about cricket; what with its arcane terminology - a "googly" here, a "gully" there ... a "slip" and a "silly mid on", the kind of playful, oblique language found in the writings of James Joyce.
Indeed, there's a 400-word passage in Finnegans Wakewhich references a jumbled-up ream of late-Victorian cricketers from Joyce's youth. Of course, Joyce was a pupil at Belvedere College, the Jesuit school which is a mainstay in Irish cricket circles.
There is an old joke which goes that a Jesuit, on being asked what his Order is famous for, said: "We're absolutely tops in humility." In the realm of cricket, the boys at Belvedere College have a reason for their swagger. In fact, this year Joyce's alma mater is hunting for its 34th Leinster Senior Cup title and its first three-in-a-row since the early-1990s.
Due to the lateness of Easter, the school team's cricket campaign is, effectively, only five weeks long, and that's provided it goes to plan. Pooled in a Group of Death, the college will be pitted against St Andrew's and CUS, two of its main rivals among the 11 schools - all based within the Pale - which have entered teams for the Senior Cup this year.
In anticipation of the cricket season, the school's groundsman, David Geraghty, will have performed "a minor miracle" in transforming Belvedere's playing grounds on the Navan Road after a long winter of rugby games into the manicured surface required for cricket.
Due to the logistics required for bussing pupils out to the Navan Road, a half-hour's journey from the school's city centre base, a lot of the hard toil of training is done in the school gym, where the dead clunk of a ball on mat indoors is a far cry from the rustic idyll of cricket played in a village green.
Not that Belvedere's players seem bothered about aesthetics. Cricket - more, perhaps, than any other game - requires special technical nous, which can easily be nurtured in a closed, confined space.
Along with Dermot Kavanagh, a member of the teaching staff, Belvedere's senior players have the luxury of Yogesh Kashyap, a professional player with the Old Belvedere club, as a mentor. Visiting from India, he coaches at the school, and tends to the kinks in their bowling styles like a golf coach.
After instinct, technique is all the players have to rely on, explains the school's Games Master, Andrew Wood, who himself played senior club cricket for Wellington back in his native New Zealand.
"You've got 22 yards for the pitch," he says. "That's the length of it. At international level, the bowlers are bowling at 140km an hour. At that level - and at schools level - you have to rely on your technique: number one for safety and number two to score runs. The challenge for the bowler is to put the batsman's technique under pressure.
"You've got fast bowlers. You've got spin bowlers who bowl slower, but rely on the spin of the ball off the pitch. The wicketkeeper, who stands behind the stumps, has to stand back (as a specialist fielder) . . . there are so many little variables.
"I think the lads love it because in a team environment individuals are more responsible for a team's success. A batter can go out there and be bowled on the first ball. That's his day done. If he doesn't bowl, he's out in the field for the rest of the day. The true team effort is when you're in the field and you're supporting your bowler. The bowler is on his own, supported by the fielders. The batter is on his own; he's the one who can have a pretty long day.
"Once the lads get the technical stuff right, which Yogesh is very, very strong on, you see the gains that they make, and the reward they get through being patient and staying at a crease for a long time. Once they get command of their technique, they understand what the bowler is trying to do. The bowler understands what the batsman is trying to do. It can be an absorbing battle."
"When you're in the middle, you're there by yourself," adds Adrian D'Arcy, a member of both the school's senior rugby and cricket teams. "You've got another team-mate with you but it's you and you've got a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. I kind of like the pressure sometimes."
"He likes the attention," says his captain, Sean McAuley.
Howzat for confidence!
BELVEDERE COLLEGE FACTS
School:Belvedere College, Great Denmark Street, Dublin 1.
Founded:1832; it moved to its current location at Belvedere House in 1841.
Number of pupils:972.
Sports played:Athletics, badminton, basketball, cricket, golf, rugby, soccer, swimming, table tennis, tennis.
Leinster school cricket titles:Since its first Senior Cup success in 1924, the school has won 24 Junior Cups and a further 32 Senior Cups.
Notable past pupils (cricket):Jimmy Boucher, Eddie Ingram, Frank McKevitt, Alec O'Riordan, Eoghan Delany and James McGee.
Notable past pupils (non-cricket):James Joyce, Joseph Mary Plunkett, Liam O'Flaherty, Kevin Barry, Dr Garret FitzGerald, Terry Wogan, Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman, and 32 former Irish rugby internationals, including Karl Mullen, Tony O'Reilly and Ollie Campbell.
INSIDE TRACK
Name:Richard Forrest
Age:18.
Position:Batsman and wicketkeeper.
Cricket highlight:Scoring a century for Belvedere College against Skerries in 2007.
Cricket hero:"Marcus North, the Australian - he plays a lot of sports like me, including hockey, apparently, and he was 29 before he made his international debut, in which he scored a century, which was quite impressive."
Play other sports:"Anything with a ball - rugby, hockey, golf, Gaelic, tennis, table tennis."
