This has already been a big year for Irish Test cricket: having qualified to compete in the format by becoming full members of the International Cricket Council in June 2017 they played five Tests in the following five-and-a-half years, but this week on Thursday at Lord’s they will play their fourth since the start of April.
Their game against Bangladesh that month started 1,348 days after the end of their previous Test, also at Lord’s (in that time England played 49 Tests, India 36 and Australia 33). Before this year no Irishman had scored a Test century since Kevin O’Brien in 2018, but Lorcan Tucker broke the run in Mirpur – where Andy McBrine also posted the country’s best bowling figures of six for 118 – and Curtis Campher and Paul Stirling followed him in Sri Lanka a few weeks later.
