Opinion | Right Field: No con from an honest John

John Mooney is perhaps an honest man, a very honest man. Perhaps. Mooney is an integral part of Ireland's national cricket team, the quintessential interlopers at this year's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

Despite the low profile of the game in the Emerald Isle, the Irish are on the verge of becoming the only non-test playing country to advance to the final eight of cricket's most prestigious tournament if they get at least one point in their match on Sunday against Pakistan in Adelaide. On form alone, Pakistan would be a solid favourite. However, it would not be a monumental upset and, regardless of what happens, the Irish have acquitted themselves quite nicely considering that playing cricket in the country was effectively banned until 1970.

"The English are not very spiritual people," immortal Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote, "so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." In the late 1800s, the Gaelic Athletic Association passed a resolution that prohibited anyone from playing Gaelic football or hurling, both national obsessions, if they participated in a foreign sport.

There was nothing more foreign in Ireland than cricket, which was long perceived as "a garrison game" played by the occupying English forces. But times change and today's national team is made up of players from both the north and the south of Ireland. They play a sport whose fundamental core is, in theory at least, built around honesty. Cricket is a game that strives to be even more vigilant than golf when it comes to a personal ethos of integrity. Any sort of dishonest or unsportsmanlike behaviour in the game, or in fact life in general, is summed up in a simple phrase: It's not cricket.

For the 33-year-old Mooney, honesty would not seem an issue. When former British prime minister and noted Irish antagonist Margaret Thatcher died, Mooney tweeted: "I hope it was slow and painful." He quickly apologised and was subsequently suspended by Cricket Ireland for three games. However, his recent revelations that his ongoing battles with alcoholism and depression led him to the verge of suicide put Mooney squarely back in the limelight. On a radio show he spoke of how the weight of covering up his alcoholism had been too much to bear and that the truth, a very public truth, had liberated him. "A lot of men don't speak about their feelings and I am one of those people," he said. "I spent about 20 years not speaking about my feelings. It was a really tough process to get where I am today."

Painful as his public admission was, Mooney said it was necessary because he hoped to inspire those who were similarly suffering to come forward and get help.

His play during the World Cup reflected a man who was seemingly unburdened and it was Mooney who made a tournament saving, acrobatic catch on the boundary rope against Zimbabwe's best batsman in a match that would effectively eliminate the loser. If he misses, the ball goes for six runs and Zimbabwe, who ended up losing by five runs, would likely be into the last eight. Replays of the catch showed that his foot came agonisingly close to touching the boundary rope, in which case the six runs score. The third referee, however, ruled it a valid catch and, most importantly, Mooney himself said he did not touch the rope. A distraught Zimbabwe captain said regardless of replays, we have to take him at his word because this is cricket. Well, maybe he took him at his word, but others were not so generous.

"Alcoholic dumps Zim out of WC", read the headline in the Zimbabwe Herald. In a scathing piece written by sports editor Robson Sharuko, every quote from Mooney's soul-baring radio interview is shamelessly lifted to come to the conclusion that, "for a man of such character it was very unlikely that, in the defining moment of such a big game, he could be trusted to have the honesty, let alone the decency, to concede his foot touched the boundary".