Cricket clubs play the first shots in team sports’ return to training

“Through famine, through the Gaelic revival, through the First World War, War of Independence, Civil War, Second World War — or Emergency, or whatever you want to call it — through recessions and 2008 when we all fell off a cliff, this club has always been operating. And now this.”

Men’s senior head coach Graham Ford stands at a bowling machine at Cricket Ireland’s return to training at the Sport Ireland Campus last week. Picture: Tommy Dickson

Slowly but surely, the Phoenix Park is returning to a variation on normal.