World Cup 2015: New Life for a Sport Long Shunned in Ireland

After recording three wins in its first four matches, Ireland was closing in on the quarterfinal of the Cricket World Cup on Saturday. (Full World Cup Coverage)

In the previous two World Cups, Ireland defeated Pakistan, Bangladesh and England. This year, it opened with victories over the West Indies, a two-time champion, and the United Arab Emirates before losing Tuesday to South Africa, considered one of the favorites to win the Cup.

On Saturday, Ireland managed a narrow five-run win over Zimbabwe at Hobart, Tasmania.

While the Irish cricket team is on an upward trajectory, the question is why it has taken the country so long to make it this far, given it has excelled in other sports with British roots, like soccer and rugby.

An easy answer: history. (Ireland Expecting no Favours From India)

"In terms of field sports being participated in, if you exclude athletics, then by the 1870s, cricket is without question the most popular field sport in Ireland," said Paul Rouse, a specialist in Irish sports and a lecturer at University College Dublin. There were more than 300 cricket clubs in Ireland, and the game bridged class and sectarian divides.

But the archetypal English game did not sit easily with rising Irish nationalism. In 1884, the Gaelic Athletic Association was formed to propagate "Irish" sports like hurling and Gaelic football. "Our politics being essentially national, so should our athletics," said Michael Cusack, the founder of the GAA.

In 1901, the GAA prohibited those who played, or even watched, "foreign" sports like cricket from playing in Gaelic sports, a ban that was not revoked until 1971. So great was the resentment toward cricket that ~CHECK~amon de Valera, a leading figure in the Irish independence movement and later the country's president, once dropped a cricket bat he was playing with instead of being photographed with it.

Where cricket continued to be played, it was poorly organized. "Local authorities fought among themselves and fought spectacularly," Rouse said. "The lack of a single body for cricket is the starting point for understanding the demise of Irish cricket."

It was only in 1923 that the Irish Cricket Union was created to oversee the sport across Ireland, which had been partitioned into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland the previous year.

While Ireland enjoyed occasional successes - it defeated the West Indies in an exhibition match in 1969 - Irish cricket lived in the shadows for most of the 20th century. Ireland did not become a member of the International Cricket Council, making it eligible for official international matches and World Cup qualification, until 1993.

The sport was seen as a niche, middle-class and decidedly English pursuit; those who played cricket were disparagingly referred to as West Brits.

While trying to qualify for the World Cup in 2001, Ireland twice had to enlist a journalist covering the team to serve as a substitute fielder. The next year, South African Adi Birrell was appointed as the third full-time coach in Ireland's history. On his first day, Birrell was handed the keys to a car and told that the trunk doubled as the storeroom for Ireland's equipment and uniforms.

"I was the only full-time employed person," Birrell said. "I literally just didn't have a clue where to start."

It was around 2005 that Irish cricket began to lift itself up. It qualified for the 2007 World Cup, which was newly expanded to 16 teams.

The national team was a beneficiary of the Celtic Tiger economic boom, as Ireland attracted workers from cricket strongholds who also qualified to play for the cricket team. Four prominent members of the World Cup squad in 2007 were immigrants: Andre Botha (South Africa), Jeremy Bray (Australia), David Langford-Smith (Australia) and the captain Trent Johnston (Australia).

The team's success of 2007, when Ireland defeated Pakistan on St. Patrick's Day and made it to the final eight of the Cricket World Cup, resonated in the Emerald Isle and beyond. It provided Warren Deutrom, who had been appointed chief executive of Cricket Ireland in 2006, with a platform to transform Irish cricket.

Deutrom said he was ruthless in how he prioritized scarce funds, placing particular emphasis on developing elite players and the national team. "The success of the sport at the top end will be the route that creates the finances that will eventually cascade down to the sport at all levels," Deutrom said. "The international team has become Irish cricket's shop window."

Cricket Ireland introduced player contracts in 2009 - the team had previously been completely amateur - and 24 players today have contracts.

But the changes extend beyond the national team. From 2006 to 2013, the number of cricket players in Ireland almost quadrupled, to 43,838 from 12,202.

Ten of the 11 Irish players who beat the West Indies in their first match at the 2015 Cricket World Cup were born and raised in Ireland. Ireland has gone from a team that imports cricketers for its national team to one that exports them, albeit unwittingly. Eoin Morgan and Boyd Rankin, two former players for Ireland, now compete for England.

If Ireland qualifies for Test status in 2018 - it now is an associate member, a lower tier than the 10 Test countries - it will have a much better chance of retaining its best players because it will open the door to far more lucrative international matchups.

Cricket Ireland has proved that an audience exists for cricket.

It has drawn sold-out crowds in Ireland. For a game against England in 2013, Ireland had to sell 8,500 tickets to break even; it managed to sell out 10,000 after a marketing push.

"You have to be prepared to take a risk," Deutrom said.

Cricket Ireland's annual commercial revenue has risen from 104,000 euros, or about $117,000, to 1.8 million euros since 2006.

Success has also led to a new image for the sport. John Mooney, the Irish all-rounder who scored the winning runs against the West Indies, has said there was "a big stigma" attached to the sport when he was a young boy in North County Dublin, and that he "never owned up" that he played cricket to people he had just met.

Mooney has been prominently used in marketing campaigns by Cricket Ireland. "We are changing public opinion on cricket," he said.

No detail is too small. Cricket Ireland is even using the same jersey manufacturer as the one used by the national soccer team and the GAA, thereby "making cricket more Irish," Deutrom said.