When Ireland played their one and only Test match at Lord’s prior to Thursday, the occasion turned out to be as chaotic as it was historic.
Four years ago, England were memorably skittled for 85 before lunch on the first morning, fought back to win after rolling Ireland for 38 a couple of days later, with 92 from nightwatchman Jack Leach thrown somewhere in the middle, that turning out, somehow, to be only the spinner’s second-most famed innings of the summer.
“It was a Test match on fast-forward, really,” Middlesex seamer Tim Murtagh, who took five-for-13 in the day one carnage, told Standard Sport. “It was a bit like Bazball but a few years ago.
"It’s one I’ll always look back on and wish we got those runs on the last day to win the game. That would’ve made it even sweeter but what an experience, to have played a Test match at Lord’s.”
The build-up from an Irish perspective was geared around the game’s symbolic magnitude, a first Test at the home of cricket effectively rubber-stamping the full Test status granted by the ICC two years earlier.
For England, though, even with an Ashes series looming, the game crept up as something of an awkward afterthought, coming barely a week-and-a-half after a World Cup final that left most feeling in need of a month-long lie down.
But on Thursday morning, as Ireland’s return to Lord’s got underway, both boots were on opposite feet. For England, the Ashes is, this time, the summer’s sole focus and this their one opportunity to rebuild the winter’s momentum before taking on Australia. For Ireland, though, the qualifying campaigns for both white-ball World Cups that quickly follow have been established both publicly and privately as the priority, emphasised by the absence of star seamer Josh Little, who is resting after playing in Monday’s IPL final.
Ireland’s high performance director Richard Holdsworth created something of a storm in a teacup when he declared this week’s contest “not a pinnacle event”, but recently he found something of an ally in England captain Ben Stokes.
“I totally see where they’re coming from,” Stokes said. “For them, it is huge thing to be able to participate in a World Cup. A one-off Test, obviously is going to be amazing to play at Lord’s against England, but I totally understand those comments that have been made. World Cups don’t always present themselves to everybody.”
Stokes’s Irish counterpart Andy Balbirnie rowed back to some extent - “These are pinnacle events, all of them, because we’re always trying to show off our team and what we’re doing as a nation,” he said - but given the level of exposure on offer at global tournaments, not to mention the uncertain state of Test cricket’s future, it is entirely logical that Irish bets are hedged elsewhere.
External forces, too, have colluded against the advancement of the country’s Test side. In part a consequence of the pandemic, three Tests played in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh earlier this year were Ireland’s first since that 2019 Lord’s game. The sequel is still just the country’s seventh Test ever - fewer games, incidentally, than they will have to play across the space of three weeks in Zimbabwe this summer to grab one of two remaining spots at the autumn’s 50-over World Cup.
First-class opportunities of any form are thin on the ground, with Ireland internationals now classified as overseas players in the County Championship, a change which effectively forced Murtagh into international retirement in 2019 and explains why he has a Guinness, rather than ball, in hand at Lord’s this week.
“It’s a shame because a lot of the Irish players who were the best players all played county cricket,” he added. “The likes of Ed Joyce, Boyd Rankin, the O’Brien brothers, Gary Wilson, William Porterfield. They all had a really good grounding in county cricket so it’s a shame those guys don’t get that same opportunity anymore.”
