The recent discovery of the records of the Ashbrook Cricket Club in Laois* which provide fascinating details of cricket played during the Famine is an opportune moment to announce the start of a project to collect, collate and publish the records of cricket played in the Leinster.
With the Leinster Senior League starting in 1919, the aim is to publish the full records of the competition on its centenary. In the meantime a small group has been formed, under the watchful eye of Gerry Byrne, to digitise all the player records going back to 1919. These records were meticulous collected by Derek Scott in hand-written volumes which themselves are an important part of the archive of Leinster cricket.
It is intended to publish details of the playing records and make them accessible on the Cricket Leinster website as they become available. It is also hoped to collect on the website articles written about club cricket over the years. Anyone that has suitable material [including scanned copies of printed articles] that they think would have an historical interest should e/mail it to the LCU at history@cricketleinster.ie
Finally, it is hoped to harness the efforts of the many dedicated archivists and local chroniclers already working on club histories. Anyone interested in participating in this project is asked to contact Gerry Byrne at Byrne Gerry byrnegy@iol.ie.
*See article in Irish Times by Michael Parsons [2nd February] entitled ‘Taking the Queens Shilling’
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/0202/1224311114059.html