ICC/CricketEurope
The ICC European Division 1 Championship gets underway in Dublin this Friday as six Associate and Affiliate nations battle it out in a round robin for the ICC European Championship crown.
It will be up to current champion Ireland to defend its title from fellow competitors Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland and Division 1 newcomer Norway.
Aside from the glory of being crowned ICC European Champion, there is much at stake for this year’s participants. As part of the ICC World Cricket League, the European Championship Divisions 1 and 2 will help to determine the placing of teams in the global league divisions 5 to 8 and the seven day event will also feature three official One Day International (ODI) matches between Europe’s top three Associates - Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland, which will count towards the global ICC Associate ODI rankings.
The tournament will also provide Europe’s top three with important preparation for next month’s ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier which begins in Belfast on the 2nd August. The top three teams from this competition will gain entry to the ICC World T20 2009 in England and Wales.
Tournament host and defending champion Ireland will start as favourite to retain the title, not least because it is probable that for the ODIs against Scotland and The Netherlands the side will be able to call on the services of three outstanding players with county contracts: captain William Porterfield (Gloucestershire), wicketkeeper-batsman Niall O’Brien (Northamptonshire), and batsman Eoin Morgan (Middlesex).
Together with Reinhardt Strydom, André Botha, seventeen-year-old Paul Stirling and O’Brien’s brother Kevin, they represent a formidable top order while the bowling, with the seam of Peter Connell – who had match figures of ten for 69 in an Intercontinental Cup match against The Netherlands a fortnight ago – Thinus Fourie, Botha and Alex Cusack, backed up by the spin of Kyle McCallan and Gary Kidd, will present plenty of problems for their opponents.
Porterfield is included in the squad for all five matches, while Andrew Poynter and Gary Wilson make admirable replacements for Morgan and Niall O’Brien for the games against Denmark, Italy and Norway.
The Dutch, already hampered by the absence of Worcestershire’s Alexei Kervezee with a hamstring injury and the unavailability of Bas Zuiderent, will be disappointed that they are unable to bring in Ryan ten Doeschate (Essex) for the ODIs; they have, however, named him as a reserve in the hope that the county may release him for these vital fixtures.
But even without him, they have a reasonably strong squad, led by wicketkeeper Jeroen Smits. Although they have been short of high-level competition since the ICC Cricket World Cup, there is plenty of experience in the team, and the return to international cricket of Daan van Bunge has undoubtedly strengthened the batting, and the inclusion of Darron Reekers in a pinch-hitter role brings back memories of the century he scored against Ireland in the ICC World Cricket League in Nairobi eighteen months ago.
The emergence of Mudassar Bukhari and Maurits Jonkman since the World Cup is a positive development, while Peter Borren, now vice-captain, has settled into a key role in the team.
One of the highlights of the tournament is likely to be the resumption of the rivalry between The Netherlands and Scotland: after two last-over victories for the Scots in the last ICC European Championships and the ICC World Cricket League, the Dutch had a convincing victory in the ICC Cricket World Cup and were well on top in last season’s quadrangular tournament match before rain intervened.
Scotland will bring Fraser Watts, Gavin Hamilton, Navdeep Poonia, Craig Wright and Dewald Nel in for the ODIs, replacing Calum Macleod, Sean Weeraratna, Gregor Maiden, Omer Hussain and Qasim Sheikh.
The experience of Watts, Hamilton and Wright in particular will be a major factor, while among the younger members of the squad are seamers Gordon Goudie and Richie Berrington, supported by the spin of Majid Haq and Glenn Rogers.
Denmark will be led by Freddie Klokker, with the batting strength coming from Carsten Pedersen, who made a not-out 65 against the MCC earlier this month, Michael Pedersen and Soren Vestergaard (who also had a half-century against MCC), and a lively seam attack provided by left-armer Thomas Hansen and Henry Saxe Hansen.
A newcomer to watch will be nineteen-year-old Rizwan Tariq Mahmood, who has progressed through the ranks of Danish youth sides and will be taking part in his first senior tournament. The Danes will, however, be without Kent’s Amjad Khan and Loughborough CCE’s Johan Malcolm.
Italy finished fifth last time, and skipper Joe Scuderi’s men will be hoping to mount a stronger challenge to the leading sides in this year’s tournament.
The squad contains six new names, including nineteen-year-old seamer Luis di Giglio and South African-born Andy Northcote, who joins his elder brother Nick in the Italian side.
The seam attack will again depend upon the experience of Din Alaud and Alessandro Corbellari alongside di Giglio, with spin coming from Hemantha Jayasena.
The newcomers to Division 1 competition are the Norwegians, who have had a meteoric rise through the lower divisions of European cricket. They performed disappointingly in the ICC World Cricket League Division 5 tournament in Jersey in May, however, and the squad for Dublin includes five players who missed that competition.
The side does still have captain Shahid Ahmad, one of the more successful players in Jersey with 349 runs at an average of 87.25, and will welcome back Muhammad Shahbaz Butt, a talented batsman who missed the ICC World Cricket League because of a visa difficulty.
Mubasshar Bhatti, the leading wicket-taker in Jersey with 11 wickets, will not take part in the European tournament, but there are recalls for Safir Hayat and Khalid Khurram, while this will be a first tournament for Shakeel Ahmad and Abdul Hamid.