Cricket has a distinctly negative effect on the Irish psyche. Look at Samuel Beckett, one of only a handful of Nobel prize winners to play first class cricket. Beckett’s pessimism about the human condition was acquired after a game against Northamptonshire in 1935 when he conceded 63 runs for no wicket and was never allowed bowl again. He spent the remainder of his cricketing career pondering the imponderables of existence at 3rd man, a posting well known for its ability to drive sane men over the boundary into madness.

It is widely rumoured that the entire script of Endgame was cribbed from the crowd during a particularly tedious county match between Somerset and Glamorgan in 1955, a game notable only for the deaths of 3 spectators from ennui. And every dog on the street knows that the absence of climax in Waiting for Godot is a metaphor not for life but for county cricket.