Story Ireland as a Test Nation

[CornishCricketer]

To celebrate Ireland's newly appointed ICC Full Member status, I will be playing as Ireland and touring some test playing nations starting with their neighbours, England. These tours will consist of Warm Up games, Tests, ODIs and IT20s. This will be a challenge for Ireland but it will be interesting to see how they fare in the longer formats of the game against test match quality sides.

 

[CornishCricketer]

The first tour match vs Lancashire at Old Trafford was a good start for Ireland as they started strong to get to 132-2. However, a collapse from the lower batting line up led to Ireland scoring a below par 174 on a flat but wearing pitch. Ireland's batting order capitulated losing 8 wickets for 42 runs in the afternoon session. William Porterfield was the pick of the batsmen with a fine knock of 79 (167) seeing off the new ball and batting patiently, with Simon Kerrigan the pick of the bowlers for Lancashire grabbing 4 wickets. Ireland's bowlers will have to perform well to even up this match, George Dockrell could be key later in the game.

 

[CornishCricketer]

Lancashire's reply to Ireland's below-par score got off to a terrible start as they lost a flurry of wickets early on in their innings. The only resistance that Lancashire had was shown by Steven Croft and fast bowler Neil Wagner, who stuck around for a while, but to no avail as wickets tumbled around them as Lancashire were skittled out for 89. The wickets were shared around the Ireland bowlers showing a complete bowling performance, with Stirling and Young picking up 3 wickets each. Ireland took a healthy lead going into the 2nd innings of this tour match, however their batsmen clearly have work to do after the first innings performance with the test matches vs England coming soon.

 

[CornishCricketer]

This thread will be back running soon, I have just been finishing my college work and I am also having a problem uploading screenshots in the way I do it. Will hopefully be posting soon!