After many years of justifiable complaint about the lack of ODI fixtures there is a sense of irony that when a steady stream of such fixtures has finally arrived Ireland is at its lowest cricketing ebb for the best part of a decade.

Since the heady results in last year’s World Cup in Australasia and the subsequent departure of long term coach Phil Simmons, Ireland’s performances could, at best, be described as mediocre. The only exception to this has been the Intercontinental Cup results but winning those games has been a constant for the 4 times I Cup champions.

The Pakistan team is here to play two ODI’s and will be in very confident mood after their demolition of England in the final Test which finished last Sunday. Three of their four man Test attack, Mohammad Amir, Wahab Riaz and Yasir Shah are supplemented by the recall of one day specialist Umar Gul. While the ODI batting lacks the big names such as Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan there is in skipper Azhar Ali, Sami Aslam, Mohammad Hafeez, Shoaib Malik and wicketkeeper-batsman Sarfraz Ahmed plenty of potential for a match winning total.
Only Hafeez, Wahab and Malik remain from the squad that pipped Ireland in a very competitive 2 match series in Clontarf in May 2013.

Ireland on the other hand still has their top six batsmen available as well as Tim Murtagh. Of the others from 2013 Trent Johnston, Andrew White and Alex Cusack have retired while George Dockrell has fallen out of favour. James Shannon, who made his debut in the second match, replacing White, has been unable to force his way back into the squad.

While a slew of newcomers such as Barry McCarthy, Stuart Poynter, Andrew McBrine, Peter Chase and Craig Young have had their moments in the past eighteen months they have not as yet delivered the consistency of their predecessors. Andrew Balbirnie for a period appeared to be the next major batting talent but a dramatic loss of form, which cost him his Middlesex contract, followed by an injury that has caused him to miss this entire season has put his career on the back burner.

We are constantly being told that there is immense talent coming through but genuine sustainable evidence is hard to find. The loss of Craig Hogan from his role as National Academy Manager is a major blow and threatens to undermine Shapoorji Pallonji’s very generous sponsorship. The rapport and respect that Hogan had built with the participants cannot be replicated in a hurry and this issue is every bit as important as training facilities in Spain.

The harsh reality is that the short to medium term prospects for Ireland success largely rest on the shoulders of our one truly top class player Ed Joyce. The unfortunate fact is that Joyce is only a few weeks short of his 38th birthday and needs more consistent support from his team mates than he has been getting in recent times.

Starting with that wonderful result in Nelson where Joyce got a crucial 84 off just 67 deliveries he has played in all 20 of Ireland’s ODI’s and Intercontinental Cup matches. In those games there have been 5,161 runs off the bat of which Joyce has scored 1,276 at an average of 70.9. His runs account for 24.7% of those 5,161 and he is 590 runs ahead of second placed William Porterfield who averages 32.7. Joyce has 5 of the 8 centuries scored by Ireland batsmen in this period and these included the two double centuries in the I Cup matches.

He was of course instrumental in ensuring that Ireland didn’t suffer the ignominy of a home series defeat to Afghanistan by scoring two matching winning unbeaten hundreds. Indeed his only failure in the series was a consequence of a blatant bit of cheating by Mohammad Nabi who would not be out of place as a boxing judge at the Olympics. His 339 runs in the series equated to 39% of all the runs by Ireland batsmen in the four ODI’s.

This week two years ago I wrote a column about how well the top five Ireland batsmen, Joyce, Porterfield, Stirling, Niall O’Brien and Wilson were doing in the County Championship. Those five batsmen had accumulated 3,291 runs led by Joyce with 955 at an average of 63.3 with the fewest runs by Porterfield who had 617 at 32.5. Joyce’s runs represented 29% of the total from those five players.

Fast forward two years and as of yesterday those same five have a total of 1,750 runs in this year’s championship. Joyce remarkably has again scored 955 with his average increasing to 73.5 while his share of the Ireland players’ runs has almost doubled to 54.6%. Despite an injury disrupted summer Niall O’Brien is second best on 432 runs. However Porterfield has not made a single appearance in red ball cricket for Warwickshire this season while Stirling has 9 for Middlesex and Wilson just 3 for Surrey.

The importance of Joyce’s contribution to Sussex was articulated yesterday by the club’s captain Luke Wright who said Sussex are keen for out-of-contract Ireland batsman Ed Joyce to stay with the county but his future will be decided at the end of the season.

"It's dependent on Joycey," Wright said after his side wrapped up an innings victory over Gloucestershire. "He has huge ambitions with Ireland, and wants to achieve Test status with them. I think he is going to wait until the end of the season and see how he feels."….

"In my mind he's still the best batsman in county cricket and I'd have him as long as he's playing the game. A lot will come down to how he feels, whether he wants to continue playing county cricket, but I'll be keeping on having a word in his ear trying to get him to stay."

A few weeks ago Joyce’s Test ambitions seemed likely to be much closer than anyone had hoped as it was being suggested that there would be a two tier Test format with a top tier of seven and a second tier of five to probably include Ireland and Afghanistan. However now that India has decided not to support the proposed system it is unclear what will happen next as India didn’t actually rule out a single tier format of more than the current ten teams.

In the meantime Ireland will have to continue down the Intercontinental Cup route for the right to play Zimbabwe in the Test challenge. Following Afghanistan’s innings demolition of Netherlands last month the likelihood is that the destination of the trophy will be between the Afghans and Ireland with the decisive game being in India next March when the two sides meet in Afghanistan’s new home ground.

That’s in the future and Ireland has to remain very much in the present. Apart from the fall off in performance in the County Championship by the batsmen the other Ireland players involved in the completion seem to have come to a grounding halt. Boyd Rankin is now out for the rest of the season with a fractured leg but apart from a 2nd eleven 50 over match last week had only bowled one over since the 2nd July. Mark Adair who was making a breakthrough with Warwickshire got injured and has only played one second eleven match since playing as a batsman only.

The Durham pair of Barry McCarthy and Stuart Poynter has found themselves out of the first team despite, particularly in the formers case, some decent performances.

The surge in International matches for Ireland may well mean that the significant involvement in County cricket by Ireland qualified players may come to a shuddering halt. County captains and treasurers will not be as keen to employ players who could well miss the equivalent of a full month’s cricket during the summer season as is the case this summer.

The alternative is for Cricket Ireland to bring the players home on full time contracts but it is questionable if that route is affordable while continuing to build an infrastructure to ensure that Ireland remains competitive. It would also be difficult to maintain a high standard because the reality is that the immersion in the county scene of Ireland cricketers competing against much better players than you would get in for example, the Interprovincial championship, has been a major factor in the success of the last decade.

Weather permitting we should get two good days of cricket in Malahide and hopefully a large crowd which will no doubt be enhanced by the enthusiastic support of the local Pakistani population. I invariably end up tipping Ireland to break their Dublin hoodoo against a Test playing nation.

This time I will keep my predictions to myself and my fingers crossed.

Both matches, tomorrow and Saturday, start at 10.45. If you are unable to get to the ground CricketEurope will as usual be providing ball by ball commentary. In addition IRISH TV is broadcasting both matches in their entirety live on Sky 191.