Trent Johnston took an indefinite break from cricket last month. This week, Dave Langford Smith hung up his boots for good. In this Twenty20 season, fans may have forgotten that these amateurs, who have silently moved back to their 9-to-5 jobs while the rest of the world is waiting for the IPL, were Ireland’s heroes at the World Cup last year. But thanks to first-time film-maker Paul Davey’s documentary Breaking Boundaries, the big high of Ireland’s part-timers has been chronicled forever.

Spellbinding, says the Sunday Independent; “an absolute triumph...a true emotional journey with the band of brothers behind one of Ireland’s greatest and most unlikely sporting success stories,” raves The Mirror; another critic calls it “David swing bowling at Goliath.”

The 50-minute film opens with a postman, a teacher, a truck driver, a marketing agent, an electrician and a farmer at their workplaces before the World Cup. It ends with the same men returning from the Caribbean as national heroes. It showcases some rare moments when cricket rediscovered its innocence — Ireland’s wins over Pakistan and Bangladesh, a tie against Zimbabwe, a Super Eights spot and finally one-day status.

It’s an against-the-odds-underdog-triumph sports flick. But unlike commercial movies of the same theme, there is no buzzer-beating three-pointer or a last-ball six as Davey’s unobtrusive fly-on-the-wall camera roams cinema verite style into the dressing room, gets a ride on the team bus, chases players during victory laps, gets drenched in champagne and captures more than one teary eye.

The defining moment of the film is a speech that captain Johnston gave to his team at the lunch break in their do-or-die game against Pakistan. While a group of half-naked men stand in the dressing room, the skipper walks in and asks one of the players if he wants to return home to start distributing post again from the following Monday, or stay in West Indies for four more weeks. He then turns to the other amateurs, reminding each of them of the drudgery of their jobs. The extempore outburst — caught by Davey’s camera — could match any Hollywood script-writer’s effort.

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