Day 1 - More to come from Adair

Ian Callender (Belfast Telegraph) reports:

Ireland’s 17th Test player may have played second fiddle to Tim Murtagh’s superb five-wicket burst with the new ball and but Adair more than played his part on his debut. The 23-year-old from Holywood has forced his way into the Test team after 15 wickets in his first nine one-day internationals and, just for good measure, he followed that with four wickets in his first three overs on his first Ireland appearance in the Twenty20 side.

But this was the big stage. Only a minority of Test match players have even played at Lord’s but 45 minutes before the start of Ireland’s first Test at the most famous cricket ground in the world, Ireland’s chairman of selectors Andrew White presented Mark Richard Adair with his Test cap. At three minutes past 11, Adair had the ball in his hand, opening the bowling from the Pavilion End. His sixth ball should have resulted in his first wicket but, having hit England’s Test debutant Jason Roy on the pads, plumb in front of middle stump, he heard the umpire’s shout of ‘no ball’. Cruel, but an elementary mistake and Adair was the first to hold his hand up in apology.

Fortunately, the wicket cost only the one run for the no ball because Murtagh had Roy caught low at slip in the next over and Ireland had their first Test wicket at Lord’s. Adair , though, would take the second. When Joe Denly was hit on the pads, this time his foot was well behind the line, he turned round to see the umpire raise his finger and Adair was a Test match wicket-taker.

Six balls later he had his second, the prize scalp of England captain Joe Root, after another leg before decision, which was ‘umpire’s call’ on review. Adair bowled one more over to complete a memorable first spell, but he wasn’t finished for the innings. After an annoying ninth wicket stand, captain William Porterfield called Adair back into the attack and three balls later he bowled fellow Test debutant Olly Stone to end the innings, England bowled out for just 85.

Ireland were in dreamland but they knew only the first quarter of the job had been done. The batsmen still had to go out and back up the bowlers and Adair is a big part of that. In white ball cricket, although he only made his Ireland debut 82 days ago, he is already a dangerous lower-order power-hitter. This, though, was something different. When Ireland lost their sixth wicket, Ireland had lost four for nine runs after the tea interval and it wasn’t a need for quick scoring, rather it was a case of digging in and keeping Kevin O’Brien company.

He started confidently enough, clipping his fourth ball through mid-wicket for a couple of runs, but would add only another single before, forgetting he was facing a red-ball, he tried to pull Sam Curran through mid-wicket and could only drag it onto his stumps. It was a lonely walk back past the aged members in the famous pavilion but he can still be proud of his first day in Test cricket. On this evidence there are many more to come.

Day 2 - Ireland refuse to buckle under severe pressure

Ger Siggins (Irish Times) reports:

On a day of record temperatures in London, it was three angry bolts of lightning that brought play to a premature end last night. They were welcome relief to Ireland, who had battled long and hard on the field in a day of unbearable tension for their supporters as they slowly asserted their domination over England. While Ireland have excelled at times in one-day games and brought off some stunning giant-killings in the last decade, they are novices in the multi-dimensional chess game that is Test cricket.

All day the game teetered on edge, the balance of power shifting delicately as wickets fell and boundaries were hit. The state of the pitch, the weather, Ireland’s fielding frailties and England’s batting blunders all came into consideration by spectators as mental arithmetic was employed to reassess the game after every over. Where that balance lies overnight, nobody knows, although the bookmakers still make England odds-on favourites.

For that, they would reckon on the pressure of a potential earth-shattering victory preying on the minds of Ireland’s batsmen, even facing a target under 200. Most of the weak-minded batting in this game has been shown by the men with the three lions on their shirts.

Perhaps the five men who won World Cup medals on this same ground ten days ago are still in the attacking mode that brought that success, and are yet to refocus their techniques for the different challenges of red-ball cricket. Perhaps some are befuddled by the prospect of playing in the Ashes, the pinnacle of the five-day game which starts on August 1st.

Or perhaps some just refuse to give the respect due to Ireland’s modest but well-drilled attack, which found new heroes yesterday. Tim Murtagh’s extraordinary display on the first day was unlikely to be repeated, and he toiled all day for just one wicket.

Instead it was Mark Adair, a 23-year-old from Holywood, who wrote the epic script and added three World Cup winners to his already bulging wicket collection. Brother of the former Ulster full-back Ross, Adair was a long time waiting to be an overnight success. He spent five years on and off with Warwickshire but his progress was interrupted by injury and he returned home after just a dozen first-team appearances.

Out of the Ireland set-up, he was a forgotten man but good performances last summer for the Northern Knights won him a tour with the Ireland Wolves, so when Stuart Thompson cried off the England ODI this May he came straight into the team. The limelight seems to suit him, and his brisk 32 at Malahide endeared him to spectators desperately searching for a new hero.

Since then he has been entrusted with the new ball and picked up 25 wickets in ten matches, including six so far in this one. But first, England dominated the morning session with just one wicket lost, in the second over. The nightwatchman, Jack Leach, played an impressively tempered knock, showing the more lauded talents how to build a Test match innings.

Jason Roy scored a fifty in just 49 balls – the fastest by an England debutant – but he fell trying to wallop a Thompson delivery that nipped back and bowled him. Leach rode his luck, benefiting from a horror missed catch by Gary Wilson and another by Adair, but the youngster redeemed himself three balls later.

Leach went for 92, held at slip by Adair, and the underperforming England middle-order had a second chance to get into Ashes gear. Unfortunately, that’s not how it worked out as Ireland’s bowlers worked their magic and England collapsed from 172-1 to 248-8.

Joe Root called Joe Denly for a single but changed his mind too late to save his partner who fell to a slick bit of fielding by Kevin O’Brien. Then Adair got one to nip back into Jonny Bairstow, who instantly called for an umpiring review. Perhaps it was panic from the batsman who had also made a first innings duck, but the TV official confirmed his departure and Irish tweeters instantly rechristened him ‘Jonny Pairstow’.

A revitalised Rankin continued to extract good pace and bounce, ripping Moeen Ali out, and when Wilson held a good catch to dismiss Root, and Andy Balbirnie caught Woakes off Adair, there was an expectant buzz among the large Irish support. In came Sam Curran to play the counter-attacking role at which he excels, and Porterfield soon had four fielders on the rope. He and Stuart Broad added a potentially vital 45, with the younger all-rounder hitting two huge sixes.

Curran eventually went for 37 off 29 balls, falling to a long-hop from Thompson which was taken on the midwicket boundary by James McCollum. But with England on 303-9, just 181 ahead, those bolts from Thor arrived to curtail the day and allow Ireland to regroup ahead of what is now likely to be the final day of his gripping Test.

Day 3 - Dream turns into nightmare but much still to be proud of

Odran Flynn (CricketEurope)reports:

It is difficult to know where to start. The euphoria of the first morning seems a lifetime away as Ireland capitulated on a day that had promised so much. It is scarcely believable that Ireland would lose by 143 runs. Early morning rain delayed the start of play by ten minutes on a less oppressive morning than had prevailed for the first two days. The temperature was down some ten degrees but in what turned out to be crucial development, the cloud cover suggested that it could be a day for the seam bowlers.

Before the start of play I had asked David “Bumble” Lloyd who he thought would win and he was emphatic that it would be England as he was convinced that the overhead conditions would be key. No one here could have possibly imagined just how true this turned out be. From the first ball of the day when Stuart Thompson produced an in-swinger that ripped out Olly Stone’s leg stump, to the final, virtually identical delivery, less than sixteen overs later, from Chris Woakes to Tim Murtagh, almost every batman looked like they were batting in a trance.

Ireland’s total of 38 was the lowest ever innings score in a Lords Test and the seventh lowest in all 2352 Tests played throughout the world. And the length of innings at just 94 balls is the equal second shortest of all time. We were congratulating Ireland at lunchtime on Wednesday for dismissing England in 142 balls which was the shortest first innings at Lords. It is bizarre that in this extraordinary Test Ireland would be dismissed in 48 less deliveries within 48 hours.

At Joe Root’s post-match press conference, he left no one in any doubt as to cause of the match finishing in less than two and a half days. He quite bluntly said that the pitch was “sub-standard” throughout the match. That assessment effectively hangs new Lords head groundsman and former Clontarf curator, Karl McDermott, out to dry. Root also made it clear that he would be very unimpressed should there be a similar standard wicket in the Ashes Test here in a few weeks’ time, although he did say that he didn’t expect that this would happen.

Ireland captain William Porterfield believed that the conditions today made it very difficult as in the face of some fine bowling it was difficult to get a start. Interestingly he argued that if Ireland had had batted longer in their first innings, which given that they were 132-2, he believed that they should have, then England would have been facing these conditions this morning. If that had happened maybe the result would have been different, but we will never know. Even if Root is correct in the assessment of the pitch, was it really a 38 all out wicket? I really don’t believe that it was, and several wickets fell to balls that could have been left. However, I feel that the biggest problem today was that very few of this side has played sufficient red ball cricket this year, particularly under testing conditions, and that lack of match practice put too much pressure on their technique, and it was found wanting.

But despite all this there are many good things to come out of the past three days. The two youngest players in the side, James McCollum and Mark Adair, can be proud of their performances. McCollum looks like a well organised opening bat and is a particularly good cover driver. He got a beauty of a ball today which many more experience batsmen would have had difficulty in surviving. He works very hard at his game and if he keeps his form, he should be the answer at the top of the order for many years to come. I talked Adair up in my preview and he delivered the goods. Apart from an occasional lapse, when he lost a bit of patience, he bowled with discipline, control and he moved the ball both ways. Frankly it was a much more mature performance than I anticipated and the fact that he bowled seven maidens in England’s second innings speaks volumes for his mindset. While he didn’t come off with the bat, he at least showed courage when a Stuart Broad bouncer smashed into his grill and then hooked the next ball for six.

The team deserves great praise for their capacity to keep going in the field yesterday when the heat was stifling and the air so thick that you could have spooned it into a cup. Don’t forget that five of this side are the wrong side of thirty with an average age of 34.5 and they and the rest of the team were stronger in their performance at the end of the day than they were in the morning session. But it would be dishonest not to acknowledge that several issues need to be addressed. The side at this level and in 50 over cricket still rely too heavily on too few of the batsmen to make enough runs and when they fail the returns are usually bleak.

Unfortunately, William Porterfield is continuously under pressure to try to reproduce the form that he displayed for the first two thirds of his career but is largely absent now. Gary Wilson is in a similar situation, and while he held several excellent catches, he also dropped a sitter and with the bat he faced six balls in the match and frankly could have been out to everyone. Ireland need a spinner who can challenge both edges of the bat and that is especially crucial in the longer forms of the game and until one is produced there will always be a lack of variety in the team.

The recent Zimbabwe series and indeed the last few days shows what can be achieved when younger players get a proper sustained opportunity. From here on in players in all formats should only be picked on merit and not past reputation. Ireland has attained a level in the game that means that they cannot afford to carry passengers. Failure to qualify for the recently completed World Cup highlighted this and going forward with the merit only policy, is the only way than Ireland can regain their success of the glory years.

As we leave this ground that has an aura unique in cricket, we can reflect on a momentous three days. The result was obviously not was hoped for but nonetheless there are many great memories to keep us sustained until Ireland dons the whites again.

Ian Callender (Belfast Telegraph), Ger Siggins (Irish Times), Odran Flynn (CricketEurope)