One of the good days

Ireland create history by beating India for the very first time

Lorcan Tucker and Jai Moondra. 📸; Cricket Ireland

Winning fixes everything. Temporarily, at least.

Amidst all the chat about lack of fixtures, underfunded pathways, (insert your gripe with Irish cricket here), it sometimes feels like we forget that the whole point of this is to create memories. Winning does that in spades.

You’ll remember where you were at circa 4.30pm on Friday. Who you first hugged when Tim Tector took that catch. Whether you roared in delight or were consumed by shock. Which friend sent a congratulatory text. Heck, even what you were wearing.

Case in point. For Bengaluru in 2011, I was in my front room with my mother. The school uniform was still on having rushed home to watch Kevin O'Brien from about his 70th run onwards.

Memories don’t come from losing. Suffering through difficult days can build bonds, but true community is forged in joy. Irish cricket has done plenty of losing of late. We needed this.

The byproduct of not playing much at home is reducing the odds of winning. In 2024, Ireland beat Pakistan in the first T20 of a three-match series. Afterwards, Andrew Balbirnie remarked that he wasn’t used to beating bigger sides at home. Famous results almost exclusively came in World Cups or bilaterals away from home.

Later that year, a Test victory followed against Zimbabwe. We can argue the toss if that counted as an upset over a ‘bigger’ nation. 2025 saw a solitary home win over the West Indies. 2026 can now add India to its ledger.

We’re on pace for one of these days a year, where special moments are made in front of the Irish public. In terms of home victories, it’s difficult to remember anything like this.

Ireland had no right to win on Friday. Not with that injury list, and not against an Indian squad that didn’t deviate much from its World Cup-winning protagonists.

Add in the old-school nature of the win. Jai Moondra has no Ireland contract and his job with Intel has finished. With his employment situation up in the air, his visa situation needs sorting as well. An ETPL deal alongside an Ireland contract should sort all that out.

Moondra aside, contracts across the board ensures this isn’t the team of electricians and postmen that beat Pakistan in 2007. But it has a nostalgic tinge.

Then you have Matthew Humphreys. Midway through the 15th over, he dropped Axar Patel off his own bowling. Well, it’s harsh to label it a drop. The ball left Axar’s bat like a bullet from the chamber, Humphreys seeing his left hand nigh on blown off. Immediately, treatment was called for. His bowling hand bandaged up, Humphreys finished the over but went off for further repairs.

It later emerged that stitches were required. Nonetheless, he returned to the field to take the final two wickets. “He’s hard as nails,” was the verdict from one figure within the Ireland camp.

Ireland didn’t just win this through grit and good-luck stories. They out-thought India. Ask around those familiar with the bowling plans. If Stormont has a bit of extra grass on the surface, hitting the middle of the pitch with cross seamers can extract extra bounce. Three Indian batters departed trying to pull.

Every now and then, a group of Irish players finds the right combination of astute planning, solid execution and some old-fashioned toughness to beat the adversity of a cricket ecosystem that does not adequately prepare them. That only serves to enamour them to the public.

Winning like this got Irish cricket on the map. Despite contracts and ICC full membership, in many ways it’s harder for this group of players to achieve these sorts of victories. Conversations on why that is and what can be done about it are important. But not right now. They can resume after this weekend.

Building these memories reminds the Irish cricket community why it exists. Everyone loves to back a winner. We’ve all been guilty of bandwagoning at some point or another.

But it goes beyond a simple binary of winning and losing. It’s about memories. Community. Where you were and who you were with. The Irish players themselves know this, celebrating accordingly on Friday instead of waiting for series end.

Wins like these don’t grow on trees. Who knows if governance changes sees them become a more regular occurrence in years to come.

When they do come, even if sporadically so, they remind us why we’re all here in the first place.