Three members of Pakistan's cricket team, who are in Ireland for a series of one-day internationals, were mobbed by excited crowds as they arrived at Castaheany Educate Together National School in Ongar, west Dublin, yesterday – and that was just the parents.
Umar Amin, Wahab Riaz and Mohammad Irfan indulged their fans by playing a little cricket, after their thrilling draw with Ireland on Thursday, and posed with the children for photographs.
The star attraction was fast bowler Irfan. At 7ft 1 inches he is the tallest man ever to play first-class cricket.
He has gone from a cricketing curiosity to an established international recently.
Irfan does not speak English, but the language of cricket needs no words for the children of Pakistani origin in the school.
Castaheany Educate Together school has 450 pupils drawn from 55 nationalities.
The school provides rich pickings for Cricket Ireland's development programme and the sixth class participates in the Leprechaun Cup for local schools.
The school has a large Pakistani population as evidenced by the large turnout from local families.
Mohammad Khan and his wife Samia had received Irish citizenship last Monday having lived in Ireland for six years. Their son Mausab (11) attends the school.
Yesterday they turned up hoping to get as close to the cricketers as possible.
"If they were in Pakistan, there would be thousands of people out to see them and nobody would get a chance to meet them," said Mr Khan. "We feel so lucky."
A decade ago the sight of Pakistani international cricketers in an Irish school probably would have met with indifference from the schoolchildren.
Since then, however, large-scale immigration and the dramatically increased profile of the sport, which started with that memorable St Patrick's Day World Cup triumph over Pakistan in 2007, has changed all that.
