The compliment brought home how much we take the media for granted and how little praise they get for their promotion of the game. Without people like Ian Callender, Alistair Bushe, Robin Walsh, Richie Kelly, Ger Siggins et al, cricket marketing would be negligible. Our sports pages are dominated by rugby and football these days, the latter a poor advertisement for a sport that once produced much more entertainment and quality. Unfortunately sales and advertising generate newspapers profits and sports editors know which side ”their bread is buttered on.” Local football is being kept alive by journalists, as the product on display is poor.
Nobody has done more than Ian Callender to promote Irish cricket in the modern era and certainly nobody has travelled further. In the early days his weekly diet was local club matches, but the rise of Cricket Ireland has dominated his professional career and made him virtually an integral part of the Irish set-up. It is a far cry from the days when cricket journalists either had the ear of the people in charge, or they were looked upon with scepticism and in some instances suspicion. Ian’s first taste of reporting Irish representative cricket was in the Dermott Monteith era and it took the leading players some time to appreciate that when he hung around looking for stories and information he wasn’t a spy in the camp, but the aspiring young journalist trying to do his job better.
By his own admission Ian never made it as a player, but in the past 30 years he has graduated to the top deck in his professional career and he can now be rightly adjudged the Doyen of Irish Cricket Writers. His diligence and perseverance in getting to the crux of stories has been his hallmark, although he deserves the highest praise for travelling the length and breadth of Ireland to cover matches and his involvement with Cricket Ireland has taken him all over the world. What many people may not know is that often these journeys were at his own expense, as Ian had to pay the bills and then pay for them through income generated from his reports to balance the books. This was no easy task in a minority sport with a limited international profile. He also had to take other jobs to make a living because cricket work was light on the ground. Who can forget his contribution to Ulster farming in the weekly Newsletter magazine?
Nowadays Ian Callender is the highly respected Belfast Telegraph Cricket Correspondent and an important part of Cricket Ireland and Cricket’s Europe’s match commentary team. In an era when players and clubs tend to rate journalists by the amount of praise they receive, Ian has kept a professional perspective throughout his career and stood objectively behind his principles to report fair and honestly on the circumstances without bias or malice. It is a virtue sometimes challenged by former players, several of whom feel you have to have walked on the moon to say it is round! Ian may not have been a cricket international player, but he has watched more international matches than any known Ireland player and if there is one man who has earned his experience in the line of duty, it is surely our leading journalist.
To-day there are more cricket writers entering the modern game, some stimulated by the availability and platform offered by the Internet. Many of them report free of charge and quite often they provide an important PR role in club cricket, especially with provincial papers. But in much the same way that players aspire to a higher calling, ambitious young cricket writers can build a career if they have the focus and determination to get to the top. If that is their chosen vocation they should look no further than Ian Callender as a role model because he has worked his way from the bottom to the top of his profession and has earned the widespread appreciation of his peers. He is the consummate professional in his trade.
Clarence Hiles
Editor
