Second XI

by Tim Wigmore

  Even without Morgan, Ireland beat Bangladesh to reach the Super 8s of the 2009 World Twenty20. With him – not to mention the estranged Joyce – they may well have beaten Sri Lanka too, rather than losing by seven runs.

  Come the next World Cup, Ireland’s best player was again playing for England: Morgan was established as an indispensable member of England’s limited-overs side.

  Still, at least Ireland had Ed Joyce back. England had not treated Joyce well: he injured his ankle on his Twenty20 international debut against Sri Lanka and had to be taken to hospital. When he was given the all-clear that evening he did not have any money on him. Nor was there anyone from the ECB to assist him. Joyce had to get a cab back to his hotel and pay the driver then.

  Despite a sparkling ODI century for England against Australia in Sydney, Joyce was discarded by England after the 2007 World Cup. He was never given an opportunity in whites, even though he described first-class cricket as ‘the format of the game that I’ve enjoyed most and been best at’. Test cricket, the allure of which persuaded him to give up playing for Ireland in the first place, proved elusive. Yet Joyce is the only player who has enjoyed victory in both games between England and Ireland in the World Cup.

  On 2 March 2011, perhaps the most extraordinary game in the history of the World Cup occurred. Even without their best one-day batsman – Morgan was injured – England powered to 327 from their 50 overs. The only solace for Ireland was that England had scored 338 to tie with India at Bangalore a few days before.

  Associates did not chase such scores. One of the features of upsets in World Cups – from Zimbabwe’s Duncan Fletcher-inspired victory over Australia in 1983 to Kenya’s triumphs over the West Indies in 1996 and Sri Lanka in 2003 and Ireland’s own glorious moment against Pakistan in 2007 – is that they came in low-scoring games. This is unsurprising: on wickets that are slower and less conducive to strokeplay, it becomes harder for Test cricketers to assert their class.

  In their first game of the tournament, Ireland had been bowled out for 178 in their defeat to Bangladesh. So a target of 328 seemed beyond Ireland’s capabilities – especially after their first ball. William Porterfield attempted an expansive drive off James Anderson. To his chagrin, the ball thudded off his bat on to his stumps. Ireland’s skipper had made a golden duck.

  Joyce and Paul Stirling both batted breezily but Ireland needed rather more than entertaining cameos. When Kevin O’Brien entered, Ireland were 106/4, which soon became 111/5 after Gary Wilson fell to Graeme Swann. Ireland needed 217 from 25.4 overs at a run rate of 8.5 an over: an arduous prospect for any side, and an utterly hopeless cause for an associate nation with only five wickets in hand. They faced embarrassment, not just defeat.

  At the time the ICC had decided that the 2015 World Cup would be reduced to ten teams. Not only that but, contrary to the basic notions of sporting competition, it would be made an invite-only affair; ‘a glorified Champions Trophy’ in the words of Porterfield. It fell to Ireland’s players to pressurise them into a U-turn. They were not making a persuasive case.

  Stocky with his hair dyed pink in aid of a cancer charity, O’Brien did not look much like a cricketing superhero. Commentators blithely caricatured him as an agricultural slogger. As Graeme Swann bowled to O’Brien early in his innings, one commentator asked, ‘What are your thoughts on four associates?’ – the implication being, of course, that Ireland’s collapse justified the decision to exclude them from the next World Cup. As if to challenge the point, O’Brien heaved the ball over midwicket for six. Not that many journalists were watching too intently as they honed their reports of a comfortable victory for England.

  While he continued to launch England around the ground – it was not slogging, but brutal, clinical hitting – journalists frantically began to rewrite. And the English players became frustrated that Ireland refused to meekly subside. In O’Brien’s account of the tournament, Six After Six, he recounts an exchange with Anderson after he had dug out a yorker:

  ‘“Good ball, Jimmy”,’ I said to him.

  ‘Anderson’s face darkened and snapped back, “What would you know what a good ball is?”

  ‘“Well, I mightn’t know what a good ball is,” I came back with, “but I know a bad one. I just hit your last one over there,” as I pointed my bat towards the grandstand.’

  The incident showed that England were becoming rattled as they realised that O’Brien intended to achieve rather more than respectability. He also revealed an astute cricketing brain. The batting Powerplay (five overs of extra fielding restrictions nominated by the batting team) had become a burden for all sides – especially England. They did not know when to take it, so normally waited until they were forced to.

  O’Brien recognised the Powerplay for what it was meant to be: a weapon to attack the opponents and put their bowling plans out of sync. He looted 62 runs in the Powerplay, smiting England’s Ashes-winning bowling attack with gusto.

  When O’Brien had made 91 and Ireland needed another 82 to win, England captain Andrew Strauss spilled a steepler at long-off. ‘It was then that I told myself to pull my head in,’ O’Brien says in Six After Six. ‘They had five men on the boundary and another four inside the ring were all on the edge of it. It was the easiest thing in the world to just block the ball and take the single.’

  With a nudge to the leg side for two off Michael Yardy, O’Brien reached a 50-ball century: the fastest in World Cup history.

  At the other end, Alex Cusack was playing a formidable support role. The pair had reduced the target to 55 to win when Cusack sacrificed himself after a mix-up between the wickets: an aptly selfless end to a magnificent supporting innings.

  That brought John Mooney to the crease. ‘I couldn’t wait to get out to bat. I was nearly out in the middle before Cusack had got off the wicket,’ he remembered. ‘After being out in the middle for only a couple of balls, I remember thinking to myself, “Jeez I wish it was the last over.” I kept on saying to myself, “Bring it down to the end.”’

  Mooney could sense how flustered England were becoming. Normally they liked to consider themselves above sledging a side like Ireland. Now they were desperate. ‘They were really riled up. You could tell that they knew they were in big trouble.’

  As O’Brien went into his shell, calmly hitting a single every ball to ensure he batted for as long as possible, the onus fell on Mooney to score boundaries. He hit five, including three off the final ball of an over. When Mooney moved around his crease and lashed Anderson to midwicket, Ireland needed only 12 from the last 12 deliveries. And O’Brien was still there.

  After the next ball, he was not. O’Brien was left flat on his back attempting to complete a second run, wondering whether all his brilliant work would go to waste. ‘We still haven’t actually talked about it,’ Mooney said of the run-out.

  There was no one better to come out at number nine than Trent Johnston. His first ball was a full toss from Stuart Broad: Johnston drove it emphatically to the cover boundary. ‘When TJ hit that for four I knew we were safe,’ Mooney remembered.

  It was left to Mooney to seal the win. Just as he had intended, he was still there when the final over began. He needed only one delivery, which he clipped to midwicket for four. Mooney remembered the moment, ‘No thoughts – just throw the bat in the air and run really fast and scream and hug my team-mates.’

  Next man in George Dockrell was so nervous that he spent the winning moment in solitude. ‘I was inside, watching it on the TV. I was actually in there by myself and as soon as the winning run was hit I sprinted out on to the balcony.’

  As against Pakistan, Ireland’s winning margin was three wickets – and Johnston was there at the end in both games.

  In the celebrations after Mooney had hit the winning runs, the television cameras picked up one of his team-mates shouting ‘Best f***ing day ever!’ It wasn’t just about beating a leading cricket nation. It was about beating England.

  Even setting politics aside
, Ireland has a deeply ambiguous relationship with England. County cricket has been hugely beneficial to Ireland, enabling the best players to turn professional and fulfil their potential. It also paid their wages at a time when all cricketers in Ireland were completely unpaid. But it is hard to find too many Irish cricket fans grateful.

  England remain as reluctant to play Ireland as they have ever been; all the other leading cricket nations in the world played Ireland before England deigned to. They have poached three leading Irish talents – Ed Joyce, Eoin Morgan and Boyd Rankin – leaving Ireland in the utterly perverse position of wanting their cricketers to get good, but not too good.

  A particularly trite argument used by some England supporters is that England have earned the right to poach Ireland’s best talent because of the role played by counties and the wider national set-up in helping to nurture it. By the same logic, many of the great West Indies players of the 1970s and 1980s would have played for England in recognition of county cricket’s role in helping fulfil their talent. And Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey, who could never have become footballing superstars had they been forced to play domestic football in Wales, would be playing for England too.

  Joyce, Morgan and Rankin were all born and brought up in Ireland. They learned the game there, playing for Irish representative and youth sides before moving to England. ‘Ireland spent a lot of money on Eoin Morgan in his development,’ Torrens reflected. ‘We sent him away to different academies and spent a fortune on him.’ Volunteers spent hundreds of hours coaching Morgan and shipping him to cricket grounds in the hope that he would enjoy a long career for Ireland.

  That is why, when England played an ODI in September 2013, one Irish fan brought in a sign that said, ‘We don’t want our best players playing for England: Irish cricket deserves better.’

  On this day, it was especially easy to sympathise. A year earlier, Rankin had retired from playing for Ireland after pressure from Warwickshire director of cricket Ashley Giles – who, in a flagrant conflict of interest, was also an England selector. Rankin took 4-46 while Morgan, on the ground where he had learned the game, scored a match-winning 124 not out.

  It is a great sporting cliché to say that a side beat themselves. On this day it was really true, because the best Irish players were playing for the other side. And until Ireland get Test status and a decent schedule of fixtures, it won’t stop; Morgan has often touted Middlesex team-mate Paul Stirling as a potential future England player.

  While Ireland lost against England, the day had still been a triumph. Ten thousand supporters packed into Malahide to witness the game; late arrivals were only greeted by ‘Sold Out’ signs. On a Tuesday in September with schools back, it was a magnificent testament to the ambition and energy of Irish cricket.

  When I visit Malahide one year on to take in Ireland’s ODI against Scotland, the scene is very different. In a sleepy middle-class enclave, 20 minutes by train from the centre of Dublin, The Village ground no longer resembles an Irish sporting coliseum, but an idyllic outground, complete with abundant space, resplendent trees and a picturesque bank on which to watch the cricket. Cars are parked only ten metres from the boundary edge. Frugal fans can even lean on the fences surrounding the ground to watch for free.

  For all Malahide’s charms, Cricket Ireland hopes that, within a few years, it will look very different. To attract the funds necessary to make ‘Fortress Malahide’ a permanent entity, rather than one that pops up for a day every two years, Ireland need a fixture list to justify the outlay. As it is, the huge investment needed for every marquee game at Malahide means that Cricket Ireland needs to sell 8,500 tickets just to break even.

  ‘It’s financially unsustainable,’ chief executive Warren Deutrom reflected. ‘If people are serious about investing in Irish cricket and assisting us to develop the game, they realise “What is the point in Irish cricket investing half a million euros to make half a million euros?”’

  This should be where the ICC comes in. But, for all Ireland’s success over the past seven years, they remain utterly reliant upon scraps of goodwill from full members. These are desperately hard to find – and the situation is getting worse. Between the 2007 and 2011 World Cups, Ireland played 17 ODIs against full members. Between the 2011 and 2015 World Cups, they played a paltry 11 – of which three were abandoned. And there is a very real chance that Ireland won’t even make the 2019 World Cup.

  Cricket is unique among sports in contracting the size of its World Cup: from 16 teams in 2007, the 2019 tournament will have only ten. Only the bottom two full members will even have to qualify – and Zimbabwe, almost certain to be among them, will even get home advantage.

  Still, at least Ireland now have what Deutrom has long demanded: a pathway to Test cricket. Details are predictably vague but it is understood that the winner of the next Intercontinental Cup will play a four-game Test Challenge – two matches at home and away against the lowest-ranked Test side in 2018. The Test side’s status would not be under threat but if the Intercontinental Cup winners won, they would earn Test status too, probably for a four-year period.

  Even if Ireland did qualify for Test status, many of their problems would remain. Regardless of on-field performance, Ireland would receive around one-eighth of Zimbabwe’s funding from the ICC and TV companies every four years: the ICC is a private members’ club, and Ireland remain out of it. There is no indication of how Ireland could ever gain full membership.

  An ICC insider accepted that and told me that Ireland’s best chance of a fixture list and ICC funding remotely resembling the worst Test sides was through ‘incremental’ improvements in the running of the game. ‘Often you don’t get the lightning-rod moment, you get incremental bits and pieces, and sometimes it’s two steps forward, three steps back, that’s just the way it is.’

  While Ireland remain excluded from the Future Tours Programme, and have a fixture list that amounts to Zimbabwe-lite, it might not deter future Irishmen from trying to play for England. ‘The money offered from the England and Wales Cricket Board was totally different class from what the Irish cricket people can offer,’ Bob Rankin explained when his son Boyd defected. Similarly, Eoin Morgan said, when I asked him about the Test Challenge, ‘Given the aspirations that I had as a kid, I’d probably still make the move if it was only four Test matches playing against Bangladesh or Zimbabwe.’

  Yet none of these uncertainties deter Ireland. Despite less than emphatic support from the ICC, Cricket Ireland are driving forward their plans to make the country into a cricketing stronghold. Their stability has been the envy of many Test nations: Birrell and Phil Simmons have been the only Ireland coaches since 2002. Between 2006, when Deutrom was appointed chief executive, and 2014, Cricket Ireland’s turnover increased tenfold, to €4.3m a year. The number of active cricketers quadrupled, from 11,000 to 44,000. In all this, the influence of Deutrom, cool, methodical and self-controlled, is palpable. ‘They’ve got a system that I would argue is better than a lot of the full members, the way they run their cricket there, and it shows,’ an ICC source told me.

  For Ireland’s Test aspirations, nothing has been more important than establishing a domestic structure – one that Deutrom hopes will cease the player drain to England. ‘They get settled there, get married and suddenly playing for Ireland becomes an encumbrance during the season,’ he reflected in September 2014.

  ‘Counties start coming back and asking us for compensation to have players available during the year, suddenly the conversation becomes more difficult. They get on the England radar, start playing for the Lions, we all see what happens. Is it a risk to Ireland’s future? Of course it is. We have to do everything we can to keep hold of those resources.’

  In 2013, Ireland created a new inter-provincial structure. It began modestly enough: with just three teams, to prevent the quality in Ireland being diluted too thinly. In a sign of Ireland’s intent, the provinces played each other in three-day cricket though, in time, it would be beneficial if
that were changed to four to mirror first-class cricket around the world.

  ‘It’s about trying to professionalise the next step up from club cricket,’ Deutrom explained. ‘The risk has been that the more professional our structures become at senior level then the greater the gap for players to step up from club to country. We had to be able to put something in place to bridge that gap.’

  While Cricket Ireland lacks the financial resources to tempt established county stars home, the standard will remain significantly below that in county cricket. But Craig Young took the decision to leave Sussex and return to Ireland, where his career has been reinvigorated. The tale of Peter Chase, another tall, young and quick bowler, suggests that Irish cricket has more depth than many imagine. After averaging 69 with the ball for Leinster in 2013, he was not selected at all in 2014. Yet he forced his way into the Durham side in 2014 and promptly took five Championship wickets on debut.

  On the banks of Malahide in September 2014, I bought an ice cream for the former Ireland captain Alan Lewis. Discussing the transformation in Irish cricket in the 17 years since his retirement, he admits to jealousy. ‘Am I envious? Absolutely. Because the other thing that you don’t know is with that type of input how good you might have become.’

  There has never been a better time to be an Irish cricketer. A generation ago, playing professional cricket was deemed beyond the reach of an Irishman. Over 30 Irishmen have played first-class cricket in England this century – and five Irish players captained counties at some stage in 2014. Counties, especially Durham and Middlesex, now ensure that Irish talent is never forgotten.