Could Ireland Save Test Cricket?
It was almost the Miracle of Malahide. Ireland’s first ever Test match and after being bowled out for 130 and forced to follow on, they somehow recovered to set Pakistan a half-decent target as Kevin O’Brien scored a superb 118 in the second innings. Then when Tim Murtagh and Boyd Rankin picked up three quick wickets to have Pakistan at 14/3 chasing 160 to win, the Irish had the opportunity not only to become just the second nation to win its debut Test match but also only the third in history to win after following on.
It didn’t happen. Fellow debutant Imam-ul-Haq hit an unbeaten 74 and, after a 126-run partnership with Babar Azam, guided Pakistan to a five wicket victory. Perhaps if Babar hadn’t been dropped in the slips during the second over after lunch… but that’s Test cricket for you. Over five long days (four in this case, day one was rained off) there are a hundred of those small but decisive moments that lead each Test towards its eventual result.
What a game, though. Test cricket in all its shining brilliance. And even if the result was the same as most people predicted coming into it, Ireland’s gallant fightback showed that they’re good enough to swim without floaties at this level.
Don’t forget that the Test realm is notoriously difficult to get accustomed to – it took Bangladesh nine years to win a Test against anyone other than Zimbabwe and it’s only in the last couple years that they’ve become a serious threat to the established teams… and if you think that’s a long learning curve then you oughta see how long it took New Zealand to get competitive.
Plus it's an extremely restricted club, having Test status. 18 years after Bangladesh became the tenth Test-playing nation, it was announced by the ICC last June that both Ireland and Afghanistan would be welcomed into that illustrious company. For Ireland to challenge Pakistan in their very first attempt is a remarkable feat. As for Afghanistan, we’ll find out about them in a month when they get their first Test away in India.
Lots of happy feelings there. Even a little poetic synchronicity. After all it was Kevin O’Brien who smashed a 50-ball century against England at the 2011 ODI World Cup as Ireland chased down a target of 328 for a famous win. It was Pakistan that they beat by three wickets four years earlier – on Saint Patrick’s Day, no less - in their first ever World Cup. Boyd Rankin starred with the ball and Niall O’Brien with the bat, both of those lads also having just made their Test debut (along with a couple other long-serving legends).
Sad thing is that while repeated gutsy performances at World Cups are what made this all possible (along with some commendable work from Cricket Ireland in setting up first-class structures and building pathways for young players), they haven’t even qualified for the 2019 World Cup. Not because of slipping performance levels either but because the ICC didn’t fancy the way the old tournament was going, so they cut it from 14 teams to 10 teams.
Which means that the 2019 Cricket World Cup will be the first ever not to feature a single associate nation and also the first ever not to include every Test-playing nation, with Ireland and Zimbabwe missing out on qualification. The ICC have made plenty of frustrating decisions that seem to be running opposite to the old ‘growing the game globally’ idea in the past. This is just one more to add to the woodpile.
And it’s blatantly obvious why they did it too, nobody even bothered to lie about it…
Dave Richardson in 2016: “Again, the reason to go to a 10-team tournament was done for a number of reasons some time back. Number one probably it was a format that would generate more competitive cricket and secondly more value. If we're honest with ourselves, a tournament which involves a guaranteed nine Indian matches is worth substantially more than a tournament with less Indian matches. And of course the money that's generated from that event is for the benefit of all members including the Associate members.”
India got knocked out early in the 2007 edition, missing out on the Super 8 stage because of an improving Bangladesh team and one of Sri Lanka’s best ever ODI teams and the blame for that clearly has to go on an Indian batting line-up that failed to pass 200 against either of those opponents (granted they scored 413/5 against Bermuda) but that’s irrelevant to the ICC. They want their cash money, bro. Gotta get paid! More games for India means more dineros in the pockets… and of course that money’s being spread out across the associate members too, so everybody wins!
Well, except that now Ireland are gonna need to spend that money trying to fund opportunities to play that are equivalent to World Cup games, with the experience and exposure of those tournaments now stolen from them. Pretty hard to see how they can build an ODI team capable of competing with the traditional cricket nations when they’re starting from that much further behind.
But, in a funny way, this sort of forces them to focus on establishing themselves as a Test match team first and foremost. While the ICC is coming up with half-arse ways to reinvigorate Tests, like that Test Championship for example (fine idea but terrible execution), it’s inadvertently been left at the feet of teams like Ireland and Afghanistan to prioritise the purest form. Something that nobody else is really doing. Help us, Ireland and Afghanistan, you’re our only hope!
Ireland’s first Test match was a celebration but it didn’t come cheap for the governing body. Cricket Ireland apparently spent €1 million on hosting this match and they did so in the knowledge that they’d almost certainly lose a big chunk of that, even after some hefty broadcast deals and ticket sales. Same as how NZ Cricket have admitted that they lose money hosting Tests and chances are that most other countries are the same… except for India, Australia, England and, as long as they’re playing one of the other three, South Africa. Test cricket is suffering because of that, although it seems like the real problem is less that Tests are expensive and more that other forms of the game are making good dollars, leaving Test matches in the shadows economically. If there were no T20s or ODIs, Test matches would be all goods.
Almost across the board the idea has been to make the five-day game more sustainable by playing less of it. Fewer matches, fewer days in each match, fewer deliveries without a pink ball. But Ireland, having worked bloody hard to earn the right to play Tests, are the only ones willing to lose money on Tests without moaning about it.
They know that this is all about legitimacy, that Ireland needs the five-day stuff to be taken seriously within the ICC. They also know that cricket dies without Test cricket. They know that bringing Test matches to Ireland can inspire a whole new generation of talent, growing the game massively from its current minnow status. The game against Pakistan was an investment as much as anything.
Ireland’s starting from zero so it’s a different situation than, say, New Zealand with our four home Tests per summer. But New Zealand struggle to fund Tests so they focus on one-dayers. Ireland are going to struggle to fund Tests and therefore will come up with creative strategies to make them work. With necessity comes innovation.
At least… fingers crossed. Somebody’s gotta figure this thing out after all.
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