Cricket

Near the end of Lotus Eaters, as Bloom walks past College Park at the southeastern corner of Trinity College, he thinks of cricket. Irish people began playing this English sport in the 18th century—the first recorded match took place in 1792 between British troops and an all-Ireland team—and it retains some popularity today. In 1904 the Gaelic Athletic Association despised it as a "garrison game," popular with British soldiers and the wealthy Anglo-Irish Protestants whose interests they guarded, and was waging an aggressive campaign to make people choose between such foreign sports and native ones like hurling. But Bloom is drawn to the slow, thoughtful pace of the game. (George Bernard Shaw brilliantly remarked that "The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity.")

John Hunt 2019

An eleven-man Irish cricket team, probably soldiers of the Royal Artillery, in flannels at their barracks in Waterford, 22 May 1909, in a photograph held in the National Library of Ireland. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

A TCD cricket game being played in College Park in 2018. Source: www.tripadvisor.com.tr.

Robert Carter's diagram of some of the standard fielding positions that defensive players can adopt, with two "square leg" positions depicted at the bottom below the batsman's box. Source: www.omahacricket.org.

Map detail showing the College Park cricket ground inside the walls of Trinity College, across the Street from the Kildare Street Club, with an added arrow suggesting the path of the struck ball. Source: comeheretome.com.

Photograph, date unknown, of James Iremonger at bat. Source: www.cricketcountry.com.