“It was a Test match on fast-forward, really,” Middlesex seamer Tim Murtagh, who took five-for-13 within the day one carnage, advised Standard Sport . “It was a bit like Bazball however a couple of years in the past.
“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.
Ireland’s only ever test at Lord’s was as chaotic as it was historic
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“I totally see where they’re coming from,” Stokes stated. “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 again 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 stated – however given the extent of publicity on provide at world tournaments, to not point out the unsure state of Test cricket’s future, it’s solely logical that Irish bets are hedged elsewhere.
External forces, too, have colluded towards the development of the nation’s Test facet. In half a consequence of the pandemic, three Tests performed in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh earlier this 12 months had been Ireland’s first since that 2019 Lord’s sport. The sequel continues to be simply the nation’s seventh Test ever – fewer video games, by the way, than they must play throughout the house of three weeks in Zimbabwe this summer season to seize considered one of two remaining spots on the autumn’s 50-over World Cup.
First-class alternatives of any kind are skinny on the bottom, with Ireland internationals now labeled as abroad gamers within the County Championship, a change which successfully pressured Murtagh into worldwide retirement in 2019 and explains why he has a Guinness, reasonably 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.”
