Howzat!

Our story begins some time ago in Australia. Expat Irish filmmaker Paul Davey was jogging in the park near his home and saw a man teaching his kids to play cricket. Not exactly an unusual sight Down Under – but the man’s shirt caught Davey’s eye. It was green and emblazoned with the word ‘Ireland’.

“There’s absolutely no cricket in Sligo, where I’m originally from, and I’d never seen an Irish person play cricket before,” says Davey. It turned out the man in the park was the national side’s captain, Trent Johnston. “I started talking to him and he told me about Ireland’s team and how they’d qualified for the World Cup,” recalls Davey, “I found out that they were made up of Catholics and Protestants from both sides of the border, all more or less amateur players. I thought I could get a great documentary out of it.”
Davey made contact with the Irish Cricket Union, who were enthusiastic about the idea. Almost before he knew what was happening, he was on a plane to the West Indies with his crew. In the beginning, Ireland’s mere presence at the tournament was hailed as a significant achievement. But things quickly became more interesting as the unfancied ‘minnows’ staged a dramatic comeback to hold experienced Zimbabwe to a nail-biting draw. Suddenly, the world was paying attention.
Surely the upstarts would be put in their place by Pakistan on St. Patrick’s Day? As we know now, of course, that was not to be the case – one of the giants of the cricketing world was brought down by a team of part-timers, amongst their number a farmer, a teacher, a postman and a fabric salesman. Davey’s cameras recorded the emotional roller-coaster that ensued, but the drama was about to spread beyond the playing field. Shortly after the historic victory, the unthinkable news came through that Pakistan’s coach Bob Woolmer had been found dead in his hotel room, with police treating the incident as suspicious.

INCREDIBLE FOOTAGE
From this point on, it may as well have been a Hollywood scriptwriter directing events. The Irish team were fingerprinted and questioned by police about Woolmer’s death, while also receiving both good and bad news from home. The North’s political parties had finally come to agreement on power-sharing; meanwhile the former Irish Cricket Union head Bob Kerr, who had attended the match against Pakistan, had passed away. And the business of cricket continued: brave showings against giants England, Sri Lanka and Australia, and another unexpected win against Bangladesh, gave Ireland one-day international (ODI) status for the first time ever.
Throughout the highs and lows of it all, the players and team personnel gradually opened up to Davey’s camera. “At the beginning, it was a bit of a novelty for them and they didn’t really know how to deal with me,” he says. “I think it’s reflected in the film – you see them interacting with the camera a lot more as the film progresses and they become more comfortable with my presence.”
Davey returned to Ireland with hundreds of hours of incredible footage and immediately began looking for a production company to help him present the story to the public. Enter renowned Irish producer and filmmaker Shimmy Marcus’ Zanzibar Films. “Paul emailed various production companies about the project,” remembers Marcus. “I thought it was extraordinary – I just couldn’t believe that somebody had the foresight to go out and film all of this. I literally badgered him for weeks until I got him to see that I wanted to approach it the same way he did.”
Since then, Paul, Shimmy and the Zanzibar team have been working flat-out on the film. The end result is something that they hope will appeal to a broad audience, even those with no interest in, or knowledge of, cricket. “I’m not even a cricket fan myself,” admits Davey. “I guess I wanted to make the Cool Runnings of cricket!”
A premiere screening of the film in the Sugar Club last week received a standing ovation from an audience of 220, including several of the players who were in the West Indies. Breaking Boundaries now stands as a permanent testament to their incredible achievement.

Breaking Boundaries is out now on DVD