A few miles outside Derry city, in the small, rural Tyrone village of Magheramason, lies Bready Cricket Club where rolling hills and the River Foyle provide a beautiful backdrop to the incredibly well-maintained grounds.

This is Boyd Rankin’s home club and “a lot of people come here because of Boyd”, says club chair Harry Rutherford.

Boyd is a professional cricket player with Warwickshire County Cricket Club in Birmingham. He played test cricket with England after leaving the Irish squad at the end of 2012 and if he walks down the street in cricket-mad nations like India, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, he is instantly recognised and surrounded by frenzied fans.

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Boyd may be one draw to the club, but the extremely impressive facilities are another.

Bready Cricket Club is the biggest club outside Belfast and houses a Centre of Excellence, which includes a huge indoor hall where machines fire cricket balls out at batsmen at 99.9 miles an hour. This was funded by Sport Northern Ireland and the lottery.

The Rankins have been involved in this club for years and Boyd’s dad, Robert, is currently club president.

“The whole family is so down to earth,” notes Harry Rutherford.

“Boyd is a lovely lad, he’s a real gentleman, a real gentleman,” adds groundsman Davy Caldwell, who was recently presented with the Shepherd Frindall Lifetime Achievement Award (a European-wide award) at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London for his services to cricket. (We’re not surprised, given his wife deems herself a “grass widow” during the summer.)

“I remember when he was this high,” remarks Davy as he shows me team photos of Boyd as a youngster. “Now I’m looking up at him.”

Just at this moment, the man of the hour strides in, greeting us with: “That’s when I was chubby.”

He’s certainly not chubby now, all six foot eight of him.

“I’m telling her how I taught you and that’s why you’re so good,” explains Davy.

Boyd has been playing cricket since the age of seven, getting involved because his dad played. His two brothers, Robert and David, play too (David played for the Ireland A side recently) and his sister, Jemma, is currently captain of the ladies team.

“Basically everybody in the family is just cricket mad,” explains Boyd. “I started scoring the book – basically marking down the scores of the game because I was too young to play and eventually worked my way up through all the underage teams from primary school, and played at school (Strabane Grammar school) as well. Around here it’s just cricket mad. Everybody just chats cricket during the summer.

“I was probably slightly bigger than normal for my age so I usually did quite well.”

Boyd played all the underage levels for the North West and started playing underage for Ireland from the age of 13, right through to U-19s. He made his senior Ireland debut in 2003.

In terms of other sports, he went for Ulster rugby trials.

“But ultimately I was just that bit better at cricket,” he says.

Boyd is from a sheep and beef farm in Bready, and after his A-levels he went to the agricultural university Harper Adams in England, where he studied agriculture with mechanisation.

During his time at Harper, he went on work placement to local machinery manufacturer Fleming Agri-Products.

“I got quite hands-on in terms of the manufacturing from scratch, right through to the finished product. They produce quite a lot of different types of machinery, grass toppers, rollers and muck spreaders ... so it was a really good experience.”

Boyd says he always wanted to come home and farm after Harper Adams, but things changed when he had to stop after year three (the degree is four years) to concentrate on the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies. That tournament went very well for Ireland and Boyd secured a full-time contract with Derbyshire County Cricket Club for the rest of the 2007 season.

“Ever since then I’ve pretty much been playing cricket full-time, 12 months of the year, travelling all over the world, so I’ve been pretty lucky.”

But Boyd didn’t grow up dreaming of a career in cricket.

“When I was 13/14, cricket in Ireland was quite amateur ... there weren’t any professional cricketers in Ireland ... I just enjoyed playing cricket and wanted to try and play for Ireland.”

Making the move

However, fast-forward 17 years and it is Boyd’s livelihood, and not only has he played cricket for Ireland, but he has played for England too.

“It was obviously a tough decision to move to England, but the main reason ... was that Ireland doesn’t play test cricket and as a professional sportsman all I want to do is play at the best level that I can, and I felt I could do that with England.

“I’d obviously love to see Ireland play test cricket in the near future, but I didn’t feel at that time it was going to be during my playing career.”

But playing that first game for England, against Ireland, must have felt strange (albeit, in the one-day format).

“It was a bit surreal really ... it’s hard to explain exactly how I was feeling, but obviously I played with all those guys that I’m now playing against. I opened the bowling against one of my best mates, who plays with me at Warwickshire, William Porterfield, whom I’ve known since I was nine, 10-years-old, so it was just, I knew everybody. All my family were there as well, so I think it was quite difficult for them as well because I’m sure they were supporting Ireland, but at the same time they wanted me to do well ... it was definitely a strange situation and one I wouldn’t want to be in every day of the week.”

Open to return

The chief executive of Cricket Ireland vowed that Boyd would be the last Irish player to leave for England, but does Boyd think he will be the last?

“I don’t personally think anybody else will make the switch at the moment, especially with the way things are looking in terms of how Irish cricket is going, moving towards test status ... obviously I would love to see Ireland play test cricket and if that happens all the best cricketers that are produced in Ireland will stay and play cricket for Ireland.”

“And will the ones who have left come back?” Irish Country Living enquires innocently.

“Aye you never know ... I’ve never said that I never would. There is obviously a period of time that I’ve got to wait.”

Players must wait two years before returning to associate nations (like Ireland) after having represented full member nations.

Boyd hasn’t played cricket with England for 15 months, so “in theory next February, if I didn’t get selected for England again, then I would be able to play for Ireland. But there’s a lot of test cricket with England over the next 12 months, so I’ve still got ambitions to try and get back playing test cricket for England but ... down the line, when the time is right, I can’t see why I can’t come back and play for Ireland again.”

For those of you who are wondering, Boyd Rankin is not single. In fact, Irish Country Living met his lovely other half, Anna, during our visit. The duo met when Boyd was out on the town in Birmingham, celebrating a win in the last game of the season last September. Anna knew nothing about and had little interest in cricket. (“It was the last sport on the list for me,” she laughs.) Which is something Boyd likes: “It’s quite nice to chat about something else.”

This must be in stark contrast to the cricket groupies out there we contend?

“Eh yeah,” agrees Boyd vehemently.

“Cricket groupies?” Anna exclaims in a this-is-news-to-me fashion.

“Better the devil you know,” we advise her sagely.

Cricket has a long way to go before it will be played right across the country and Boyd is still an unfamiliar face to many. He perplexes non-cricket fans who meet him for the first time.

“I’m quite tall, so the first thing somebody will say is: ‘You must play basketball’, and I’m like: ‘Nah, I don’t play basketball’. And then they say: ‘You must play rugby’ and I’m like: ‘Nah I don’t play rugby’, and they’re like: ‘You must play some sport’, and I say: ‘Cricket’, and they’re like: ‘Heh?’”

There’s no doubt such conversations keep a person grounded, but Boyd Rankin already has his feet firmly on the ground. Cricket or no cricket, he still has his sights on farming. His brother and dad are currently farming full-time.

“My plan was to come back to the home farm. I’m not sure whether it’ll work full time, but I’d like to stay with the agriculture side of things.”