IRELAND’S ASIAN SUMMER

This week marked the tenth anniversary of Ireland’s first ODI when on the 13th June 2006 they hosted England in Stormont and put up a credible performance losing by just 38 runs. Only Kevin O’Brien remains from the Ireland side but another man making his ODI debut that day, Ed Joyce, is now in green with the three lions long dispersed.

While England, largely due to a Marcus Trescothick century, won the match O’Brien triumphed in his battle with the Bray man. He caught Joyce for just 10 off the bowling David Langford-Smith and made 35 from 49 balls with the bat. For good measure Kevin also caught Glenn Chapple off DLS’s bowling and got his own first ODI wicket when Andre Botha caught England skipper Andrew Strauss for just 4.

That was the first of 101 ODI’s that Ireland have played to date and it might surprise some that virtually half of those (50) have been against Test playing countries. That there has been that many is primarily due to Ireland qualifying for each of the three World Cups since their ODI debut.

Although the 101 matches have yielded 45 victories all but eight of those have been against fellow Associates. Zimbabwe has been beaten three times with Bangladesh being defeated twice while England, Pakistan and West Indies have all bowed the knee to Ireland once and in each case at a World Cup finals match.

Kevin O’Brien (94) and William Porterfield (84) are the most capped players in the ODI era.

Tomorrow Ireland welcome Sri Lanka to Malahide for the first of nine home ODI’s this summer. The two sides meet again on Saturday at the same venue which will also host Pakistan for two matches in August.

In July the action moves to Stormont for five ODI’s against main Associate rivals Afghanistan and the home season is rounded off at the end of August with the Intercontinental Cup match against Hong Kong in Belfast followed by two T20I’s in Bready against the same opposition.

It is a range of fixtures that will thoroughly test Ireland’s skills and temperament as they make the transition to a team that aspires to carry on the glory days of the Birrell and Simmons era.

Since the 2015 World Cup the majority of action for Ireland has either been in the Intercontinental Cup (100% successful) or in the T20 format which at best could be described as disappointing.

Ireland will be happy to get back to the format that has got them international recognition and has had an influence on the likely journey to Test status.

Given that Ireland and Afghanistan are both on the 12 team official ICC ranking table every game now has a context and the margin between Afghanistan in 10th place with 51 points and Ireland in 12th with 42 points can be bridged during the summer. The vagaries of the ranking system mean that should Ireland lose both matches against Sri Lanka they will be no worse off than they are now while one Ireland win would move them above Zimbabwe and within a point of Afghanistan.

Even with two losses this week a 3-2 win against Afghanistan in July would see Ireland move into 10th place.
Now while the ICC has tried to convince people that Ireland and Afghanistan have a realistic chance of making the top eight ranked ODI teams by next year in order to automatically qualify for the 2019 World Cup I would suggest that if you have a spare fiver you should buy a lottery ticket as that is a much better bet.

However the more victories that Ireland gets the better off they will be and it will help insure that they avoid the play off against the top ranked World Cricket League team to retain their place on the ranking table.

It is also overdue for Ireland to beat a Full Member in Dublin and they might not get a better chance this year than the first match tomorrow. The Sri Lanka players who did not play in the Test series against England will be short of match practise and there is no longer the intimidating presence of Sangakkara, Jayawardene, Dilshan or Malinga.

However none of those came here in 2013 when Sri Lanka had a comfortable 79 run victory despite only making 219-9 in their 50 overs largely as a result of an excellent spell of 2-21 off ten overs by Tim Murtagh. Only William Porterfield with 37 and Niall O’Brien with 33 made any significant score in Ireland’s meagre reply.

The absence through injury tomorrow of the older of the O’Brien brothers is a serious loss both with the bat and the gloves. I have written on these pages on many occasions about his importance to Ireland and it was interesting that Trent Johnston recently criticised Phil Simmons for not restoring him to the wicket-keeping role.

Only Porterfield with his 7 centuries and 11 fifties has passed fifty in ODI’s on more occasions than Niall’s 15 half centuries. However his brother Kevin, the evergreen Joyce and Paul Stirling have been in prolific form for their counties and will be crucial to Ireland’s chances of either posting a formidable total or chasing whatever target is set for them.
The batting spot vacated by Niall will be a toss-up between Stuart Poynter and John Anderson. Poynter had a stellar start to the season for Durham seconds, tailed off in the second half of May but has got half-centuries in each of his last two matches.

Anderson however has scored almost 800 domestic runs this season and if the Inter-Provincials are to have any meaning he should be in the team irrespective of whether or not Poynter is selected.

The return to the Ireland fold of Boyd Rankin certainly adds menace to a bowling attack that has been more popgun than shotgun for the best part of the last two years. It will also be interesting to see how the new kid on the block, Barry McCarthy, handles his first taste of senior International cricket assuming that he is selected. The late recall of Max Sorensen to the squad presumably means that he is in contention but on the evidence of Durham’s matches McCarthy is at least as quick, he registered 86 mph on a couple of occasions last week, and is worth a shot especially with the experienced Rankin and Murtagh alongside him.

I expect both Andy McBrine and George Dockrell to play so all bowling options are covered. It is now a question of belief that Ireland can win. Their last ODI was a win in Harare last October having disappointed in the first two of that series against Zimbabwe. This is the same Zimbabwe that has lost five home ODI’s against Afghanistan in the past 18 months.

And it is the same Zimbabwe that despite the largesse thrown at them by ICC has just suffered one of the worst series defeats in ODI history. Today they lost their third and final match against an India side that M S Dhoni apart was effectively a second string eleven.

However it was the manner of the defeat that will have shaken Zimbabwe and ICC to their foundations. In the three ODI’s India lost a total of just three wickets and negated the value to India of testing out their reserve batting strength as only four batsmen got a hit over the three matches.

It also allowed the India bowlers pick up a fistful of cheap wickets as Zimbabwe could only aggregate 417 runs in the series with their last seven wickets in each innings only contributing a grand total of 140 between them. Surely if India wants to test out their reserve strength they could take a trip to Ireland and you can be certain that they would meet much stronger opposition.

This is the first game with a new sponsor KPC Group and it is hoped that a crowd worthy of an ODI against a Full Member will be in attendance but there are a lot of counter attractions. For instance tomorrow Northern Ireland play their second European Championship match while on Saturday the Republic play their second match at 2pm with Ireland then facing South Africa in the second rugby test at 4pm.

Test status is looking more and more like a genuine possibility before the end of the decade and tomorrow, albeit in a different format, Ireland begins the journey that they hope will have them properly prepared for that eventuality. I will return to that theme and the role of Cricket Ireland in my next column but for now it is Ireland to win.
The matches in Malahide start at 10.45am both tomorrow and Saturday.