John Wright was the administrator who brought Irish cricket from backwater status to a ranking in the top ten of the game. His understated style and political acumen helped Ireland to make rapid progress and his jovial nature made him an extremely popular figure.

When he took over as honorary secretary of the Irish Cricket Union it was a small, unambitious organisation content to play a fixture list heavy with friendlies against the likes of the MCC and the Duchess of Norfolk’s X1. When he stepped down ten years later, Cricket Ireland was a professional body whose flagship team had reached the last eight of the World Cup, ranking ahead of Zimbabwe.

It was an often tempestuous road, but Wright’s charm and consensus-seeking approach carried the organisation through, no mean feat in a body that brings together people from all traditions.

He made friends beyond Irish shores, and delighted in telling how West Indies captain Brian Lara came to buy him a drink at the World Cup. Wright was sitting alone in the pavilion in Barbados after Ireland’s heavy defeat to Australia when Lara walked over. “He said to me ‘I understand it’s one of those days you want to go and have breakfast again and pretend that hasn’t happened’!”

Wright spent all his life in the picturesque north Dublin village of Malahide. Educated at the Christian Brothers school in Skerries, he worked in his family grocery before moving to a clothing manufacturer’s in Balbriggan as company secretary. He retired in 1997 to take up the honorary post as secretary of the ICU.

His cricket career was modest, and he always played down his ability. He captained the club’s third XI to a Leinster Minor Cup triumph in 1963 as a lower order batsman and slow left-arm spinner. It was this, and his contrasting surname, that gave him the nickname “Lefty” Wright.

He served as club secretary and as delegate to the Leinster Cricket Union and ICU, later serving as president of both the LCU and ICU, before assuming the secretary’s post. He took over at a key moment, with Ireland’s small but talented group of players in need of the impetus to drive them forward. The bid to emerge from the 2001 World Cup qualifier in Toronto proved disastrous but Wright oversaw the prompt recruitment of the inspirational Adrian Birrell as coach. Wright’s backroom dealing also ensured that the next qualifiers were held in Ireland, a significant boon. As Birrell built his team, he took advantage of the boom in immigration from cricket nations, and Wright's political nous helped to ensure this policy ran smoothly.

“There is no doubt that it was John's skill in the committee rooms at Lord's and ICC that has Irish cricket in the healthy place in which he left it,” one colleague said. “He steered us from rank amateurism into a semiprofessional era.”

Captain Trent Johnston paid tribute: “He was a great servant of Irish cricket — he always put the game first and himself second. Our success was a large part down to the him and his behind-the-scenes work. He was also a great friend to the players.”

He was a significant backroom figure in the Fianna Fáil party, friendly with the former Taoiseach Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern, and masterminded the campaigns that saw his younger brother G.V. elected as a member of the Dáil on three occasions. “John understood power”, one friend said. “He was a background operator who used his contacts to get things done.” He had been active in the moves to bring the proposed national stadium to Malahide and his death is a severe blow to the project.

He was also active in the local Gaelic Athletic Association club, St Sylvester’s, and was a follower of National Hunt racing, annually attending the Cheltenham Festival.

In February, with many enormous steps now complete, he stepped down from the ICU. He was presented with an ICC Global Award on his retirement, when the ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed told him: “There is no doubt that your efforts have formed a significant part of the successes that Ireland has enjoyed in recent years.”

He never married. He joked that “a married man couldn’t have got away with devoting so much time to this [cricket]”.

John Wright, cricket administrator, was born on October 10, 1942. He died on June 24, 2008, aged 65