IRELAND'S cricketers today step onto the Castle Avenue outfield for the 75th time – or 76th if you're at the Thursday game. No matter what the future holds, it will be a long time before anywhere else hosts the Irish team as many times as Clontarf.

Nowhere else has made it to 50 yet, with Rathmines providing the venue 49 times, College Park and Lord's 48, and Ormeau and Stormont 45 each.

It is fifty years since Castle Avenue hosted its first Ireland game, a three-day game against MCC. In these days of 30-40 games a year, it is astonishing to note that this was the only international played in 1964. Three days of steady rain had put paid to the annual match against Scotland in August.

Presumably because he couldn't stop the weather, the Irish selectors took the captaincy off Alec O'Riordan who had been in charge for three seasons after being appointed aged 21. Gerry Duffy came in for Joey O'Meara and Con McCall was handed his debut after scoring a century in each innings for Ulster against Munster at the Mardyke the year before.

Malahide's Dougie Goodwin dropped out late with an injury and local 22-year-old left-armer Gerry Kirwan was brought into the XII but he had to wait another 19 years for his only two caps.

There was much anticipation about the MCC selection of current England captain Mike Smith, and the legendary Peter May, but they both pulled out at the last moment.
New captain Donald Pratt had the same problem as O'Riordan as Saturday's play was washed out, and with Sunday a rest day the game became a two-dayer.

It turned into an exciting one, with three declarations setting up a tense finish which was screened live on the new Telefís Éireann channel, later known as RTÉ. This may have been the first live broadcast of a game here. An hour's play was shown from 5pm until a ten-minute break for the News and Angelus, with viewers returning to catch the last twenty minutes before 'Men Into Space, a nuclear age adventure series' followed at 6.30pm.

Ireland had been set 164 to win in two hours, but were 143-8 when Duffy, kept back for an emergency, came in with nine minutes to go. The chase was called off and Ireland finished 16 runs short.

MCC 190-7dec (R Subba Row 61) and 174-5dec (R Gale 78) drew with IRELAND 201-6dec (C McCall 81, T McCloy 52) and 148-8 (M Stevenson 55no, S Bergin 50)