EJ Donovan was an Irish cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er. He made his debut for the Ireland cricket team against South Africa in June 1904 and went on to play for them on four occasions, his last match coming against Yorkshire

Yorkshire County Cricket Club

Yorkshire County Cricket Club represents the historic county of Yorkshire as one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh domestic cricket structure....

 in May 1907.

Of his matches for Ireland, just once had first-class

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 status, his last match against Yorkshire in May 1907. In all matches for Ireland, he scored 69 runs at an average of 34.50, with a top score of 38 against Cambridge University

Cambridge University Cricket Club

Cambridge University Cricket Club is a first-class cricket team. It now plays all but one of its first-class cricket matches as part of the Cambridge University Centre of Cricketing Excellence , which includes Anglia Ruskin University...

 in July 1904. He took four wickets at an average

Bowling average

Bowling average is a statistic measuring the performance of bowlers in the sport of cricket.A bowler's bowling average is defined as the total number of runs conceded by the bowlers divided by the number of wickets taken by the bowler, so the lower the average the better. It is similar to earned...

 of 29.75, with his best bowling figures of 2/17 also coming against Cambridge University.

His son Robert also represented Ireland at cricket.