There's few more exhilarating sights in cricket than that of a fielder pinging the ball in from the far reaches of the boundary right over the stumps. It's a rare sight too, in Irish cricket. Legendary 'arms' like those of Ivan Anderson and Tommy Harpur haven't been seen for many years, although Angus Dunlop and Ed Joyce have been known to do their share of pinging.

Back in the last century, throwing the cricket ball was a recognised athletic event, a feature of all the top meetings of the day. The greatest Irish cricket history source, the Lawrence Handbooks which ran from 1865/66 to 1881/82, also carry details of athletics meets and it is here that we can see how the event was so keenly contested.

The Trinity College Races, an annual feature of the Trinity Week celebrations for more than 150 years, was the premier meeting in Victorian Ireland. Lawrence began covering athletics in 1868, when a C Hawkey won the Trinity event with a throw of 104 yards and six inches. He defended his title the following year, when the event was also part of the NICC sports (WG Robinson, 104 yards 19 inches) and the Irish Civil Service (JH Warren 88 yards, 2 foot). Few of the men who won the event over the years were notable cricketers, but John Fox, who won in Trinity in 1870, was an Irish international and later played for Gloucestershire.

The Steve Backley of Irish cricket ball throwing, however, was Frederic Kidd, a medical student at Trinity who doesn't seem to have been much of a cricketer - he never made either the 1st or 2nd XIs while at college. He won the event every year from 1876 to 1878, with a best throw of 114 yards, 1 foot, 7 inches, as far as I can ascertain the Irish record. Kidd even travelled to compete in the event at Ormeau, notching 102 yards and winning the 1878 title. The best mark set by a northern cricketer was 109 yards 3 inches by T Netterfield at the Armagh CC sports in 1870.

According to Wisden, the world record is an impressive 140 yards 2 feet, achieved by one Robert Perceval at Durham Sands racecourse in 1882, beating the then mark of 140 yards 9 inches set by Ross Mackenzie in Toronto ten years before. The greatest all round cricketer of them all, WG Grace, had a best recorded distance of 118 yards. Measuring such distances hasn't died out, either. Alastair Fraser - younger brother of England paceman Angus - threw 130 yards at Chelmsford in 1991.

The arrival of the GAA probably put paid to it as an athletic event. When it was founded in 1884, the GAA was primarily concerned with athletics, with hurling and Gaelic football of lesser concern.

The event had disappeared from the serious athletics clubs programme around the mid 1870s, but Trinity and North kept it going for several years more, at least for the 16 years Lawrence was in existence. Frank Kempster = who scored Ireland's first international century in 1877 - won the College Races event in 1872, 1874 and 1875.

It was also an established part of the school sports programme, and was obviously keenly contested - Coleraine AI awarded a plated butter cooler to MK Fleming for his winning throw of 98 yards in 1879, and a toast rack to runner-up Thomas Henry. Armagh Royal School presented H Littledale with a whip for his effort of 85 yards and CW Gordon a courier bag for winning the junior title.

The best mark set at a school sports was 109 yards by D McCann of St Mary's College, Dundalk in 1878 - an Eton College schoolboy WF Foster once threw 132 yards!

There was a revival of the event in Trinity in the late 1930s. The future controller of BBC Northern Ireland, Waldo Maguire, won three years in a row from 1939, with a best throw of 103 yards nine inches, winning ahead of future Classics professor and Phoenix cricketer John Luce. But the event was soon abandoned, never to be staged again.

So, what about a revival of this venerable event under the auspices of the ICU? Invite all those likely lads to the cup finals of the respective provincial unions (it might even get along a few non-partisan supporters) and let them all have a fling during the luncheon interval. The best five or six could have a couple of chances to improve their mark during tea. Then get the four winners to come along to the All Ireland Cup final and we could find the Man With The Golden Arm - and maybe beat Frederic Kidd's record too!