Sri Lanka intel - are we set for a cricketing Six Nations?

All the information and stories gleaned from following Ireland at during their World Cup campaign

Before Harry Tector nicked off Glenn Maxwell with a round-arm, skiddy, short and wide delivery, Irish players had their fun with the man who may well be their future employer.

While Maxwell was at the crease, Mark Adair is at least one green-clad fielder understood to have referenced his investment into the Irish Wolves, the Belfast-based European T20 Premier League franchise. Low hanging fruit but it clears the bar of solid sledging.

Ireland’s T20 World Cup defeat to Australia wasn’t exactly an audition for those looking for some extra franchise cash. But a strong performance in the immediate vicinity of a man who will be heavily involved in Wolves recruitment in the coming months wouldn’t have hurt.

Not that any Irish players covered themselves in glory. Three further dropped catches (after seven against Sri Lanka) wouldn’t have impressed the new boss while he was batting. That said, Maxwell took a leaf out of the Irish book when dropping a catch against Oman later in the tournament.

Cricket tours are always full of stories. Yarns that make you smile. Or cry, if you were one of the Australian contingent spotted drowning their sorrows after Ireland’s washout with Zimbabwe confirmed their early departure.

Add to the sad list the four Irish players forced to hang around for three hours in Colombo airport before checking in for the flight home. At World Cups, the ICC pays for business class travel. Every country gets 25 slots at the front of the plane, free of charge. The problem is, Emirates planes don’t always have enough posh seats, especially as Ireland’s flights wouldn’t have been confirmed until their final game just 24 hours before heading home.

The Irish squad couldn’t all fly at the same time. Four poor sods - alongside at least one member of the backroom staff - had to travel to the airport with those on the earlier flight only to wait for their 2.30am departure. The airline wouldn’t let them check in so far in advance. Sorry you’ve just been knocked out lads, fancy a three hour sit on your suitcase?

These sorts of yarns don’t survive the cutting room floor of tournament post-mortems that focus on the on-field issues. With that in mind, here are the best bits of fun, insight and, yes, even some fixture news which was gleaned after 10 days following Ireland in Sri Lanka.

Fixtures

Let’s get this out of the way quickly, given how Cricket Ireland’s habit of withholding summer fixture information vexes plenty. To be fair, waiting on India to confirm if they’re touring and, if so, for how long, removes CI’s agency from the situation. The wisdom of relying on one tour to fund the majority of your fixture list is a different conversation for another day.

CI originally asked the BCCI to come for four T20Is. ETPL investors were told that the game would happen in close enough proximity to the new competition that the Malahide stands would stay up once franchise fixtures moved from the Netherlands to Dublin (some time in September).

There were murmurings of a multi-format tour, CI hoping to convince India to add ODIs to the short form matches. It appears, however, that T20Is were always the priority given they garner more value from Asian broadcasters than longer form cricket.

If India agrees to come for three of those four desired matches, CI is confident that they will earn enough to host Bangladesh - one of two summer FTP commitments - on home soil. If it’s fewer than three, those games will likely be moved to the UK. Given the ETPL taking up a late summer slot, the other FTP visit, that of Afghanistan, is likely to be moved to the UAE in the autumn.

The latest CI proposal, according to senior figures, has changed to three T20Is in June, rather than August. These would be before India’s white ball tour of England in early July. CI officials are confident that India will tour, the question being for how many games at this stage.

The Test match against New Zealand in May is not dependent on India travelling. That has been locked in for some time (this outlet was made aware in September) but official confirmation has not yet come through. A board meeting was held on February 18th. We were anticipating some sort of partial fixture announcement, focusing on the Test at least, afterwards but at the time of publication nothing has come through.

CI representatives will attend the T20 World Cup final in India and are hoping to use that time to shore up the BCCI’s commitment. Once that is sorted, an announcement is expected. For reasons that are not clear to supporters looking to book travel to Belfast for the NZ Test, CI prefers to do one big fixture dump, instead of revealing the Test dates now.

From a media perspective, it makes more sense to do multiple announcements once information is confirmed, rather than wait for one big reveal. The more things get broken up, the more column inches get devoted to reaction.

Cricket-less in Dublin?

This may well look out of date quite quickly if and when CI announce their fixtures and the venues. But, according to one senior CI figure, there is a possibility, be it slim or otherwise, of no men’s international cricket being played in Dublin this summer.

The reason? Cost. Putting Malahide together, with all the stands and prefab changing rooms that meet ICC requirements, has become prohibitively expensive. Much like everything else in Ireland’s capital.

Stormont, by contrast, doesn’t require temporary changing rooms given the facilities available in the Civil Service Northern Ireland CC clubhouse. I put it to said CI figure that, should India for instance be hosted north of the border rather in Dublin, would there not be challenges putting up the required stands for larger crowds? Apparently, Stormont is capable of hosting as many people as Malahide.

There has also been chatter of playing India in England, although that has died down.

Up north, the question of whether as many people will turn up is valid. There is likely an element of politics at play here but, for whatever reason, games in Northern Ireland simply don’t seem to attract the same number of fans as ones in Dublin. If it’s India playing, though, expat fans will attend no matter where the games are hosted.

This isn’t a concrete news line that there definitely won’t be any men’s international cricket in Dublin (Clontarf and Malahide will host ETPL games, while the former is in line for women’s internationals as well), but it certainly is a development to keep an eye on.

Cricket’s Six Nations?

Tim Wigmore in The Telegraph turned some heads recently with his column outlining the need for a European Cup in cricket, similar to what rugby has with the Six Nations. This after Italy qualified for the T20 World Cup and won a game, Scotland giving England a scare, the Netherlands getting themselves into a good position vs Pakistan and Ireland also featuring.

Tim is no fool. He wouldn’t have written this unless he knew something was in the works.

We’ve talked about the need for this competition for some time on The Irish Cricket Podcast. There have been strong hints that CI are exploring such a tournament on that same show. During the lengthy rain-watching stint in Pallekele last week, I spoke on TMS about plans that are indeed afoot to lure England into committing.

The merits are pretty clear. European cricket is capable of producing talent but Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands and now Italy don’t play enough quality matches with context to keep their improvement graph linear. England are learning the danger of not having enough competitive teams to play against outside of India and Australia. Broadcasters and fans are not as interested in uncompetitive shellackings.

A Five Nations/European Cup would be an easy sell to fans, both cricket hardcores and casuals. Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Dublin are all attractive travel destinations. Ditto any traditional cricket ground in the UK. Given the success of rugby’s annual Six Nations, a cricketing equivalent should in theory be an easy sell to broadcasters - it doesn’t need to be explained to them in the way context-less bilateral cricket does.

Will it actually happen? With poor cricketing infrastructure in all of the relevant countries apart from England, the ECB would have to bite the financial bullet to get this thing off the ground. The decision ultimately rests with them.

Last year, CI tried to engage the ECB. Apparently, initial reactions were positive. Behind the scenes, though, the English suits were concerned about the already packed international schedule, plus the commercial viability of a new competition with only one country that has a sizeable cricket market. Intriguingly, CI used the following as an argument to persuade them: since this new competition may fall outside of the ECB’s current broadcast deal with Sky, they could sell it as a separate offering to the highest bidder, therefore adding extra revenue. That is, of course, if TV companies bite on the concept.

According to one senior figure, CI has since gone to the ICC. Look how India have helped Afghanistan and other developing nations in the region. Can the ICC try and push England to become a European benefactor?

Which is where the trail has, for now, gone cold. Some figures with knowledge of discussions believe a version involving Ireland, Italy, Scotland and the Netherlands could go ahead if England continue to show reluctance. Still, it’s difficult to envisage how such a competition is paid for, given all the financial issues in those countries (even with CI’s full member funding), without English participation.

Those involved are reluctant to divulge any more information. Some think England can be swayed, others are less confident. Again, one to watch over the coming months.

Media vote with their feet

For the first time since starting to cover this Irish team towards the end of 2021, yours truly was the only Irish written journalist in the press box at an Ireland men’s game.

Such was the lack of cut through back home, Test captain Andrew Balbirnie regularly took to Instagram to criticise RTÉ - the national broadcaster - for their failure to adequately cover the competition.

In the USA two years ago, there were three Irish written journalists and two broadcasters. This time around, there was one writer and one broadcaster - Niall O’Brien commentating for the ICC. It’s a slightly easier gig for the broadcasters given they are paid by a governing body that will always want at least one voice from every country. It’s harder for writers if editors simply aren’t interested.

Woe is the poor journalist who managed a trip to Sri Lanka… This isn’t a moan about a lack of work, but rather a sad reality of the state of cricket in the Irish public’s sporting conscious. Yes, these games clashed with the Six Nations. But it was also a World Cup. If outlets aren’t going to cover Irish cricket now, then when?

Perhaps this is a legacy of Ireland’s lack of cricket. Generally speaking, Ireland needs a World Cup win to get widespread coverage. Failing to be a well-rounded team thanks to a busy schedule has clearly affected Ireland’s ability to beat top opponents.

Alongside that, the schedule has given Irish journalists fewer opportunities to cover the team locally. Outside of the diehards, the public knows nothing about this team. The personalities. What makes this group interesting beyond the cricket, given they’re going to struggle at ICC events as currently constituted? If Ireland play the majority of their cricket overseas, how can journalists get access to tell the public the interesting stories required to drum up interest?

For most media outlets, (with a couple of exceptions, noting Ger Siggins’ recent long read in the Daily Mail on how to fix the sport) covering cricket is a box-ticking exercise. Stick up a cursory match which was emailed to them by Cricket Ireland.

That strategy benefits nobody. In today’s day and age, more and more of those interested in the match go to Cricinfo to look at the scorecard, rather than read a play-by-play account. Match reports are obsolete.

As a media outlet, to keep eyeballs on written pieces especially, you need to offer something different, insight that fans can’t get from watching on TV or via scorecards. In cricket, that necessitates expensive journeys to far flung places to get stories such as the ones appearing in this column.

Which is why this website was set up. Over the last fortnight, we’ve published articles about Chris Brown working on George Dockrell’s bowling resurgence, Irish coaches frantically defending their fielding work and Josh Little explaining why he’s struggled for form.

These stories would not have been told without travelling to Sri Lanka.

Equally, all the lines about fixtures, the European Cup and player movement in this article come from speaking to people without a microphone in their face. Plenty of other insight, from Ireland’s delight at getting away from the Premadasa where conditions surprised them, to players and coaches reaching the end of their tether with being asked to compete at these events with six weeks/two months of build-up, as opposed to 12 months of consistent cricket, came from informal conversations.

These only happen when you develop relationships in person, spending time with the protagonists at the games themselves.

Thankfully, by working on the radio and covering games not involving Ireland, the recent Sri Lanka trip washed its face. If it were purely an exercise in garnering Irish written content, it would be a different story.

All that can be said at this stage is, if you value insight such as this, learning things about Irish cricket which would not see the light of day if covering matches from the sofa, then please financially support this page. If in a position to do so.

Irish cricket deserves proper coverage and mainstream outlets are not willing to pay for it. If you enjoy this site then the more people who support, the more time can be spent working on stories.

This may well come across as a desperate plea but, hopefully, some see it as an honest reflection of reality. Rather than moan at the big outlets that no longer view cricket as relevant, support the one that did just follow the Irish game across the globe.

Josh Little’s Middlesex future

In an interview after his return to the XI (and to form) against Oman - one of the listed stories which would not have come without travelling to Colombo! - Josh Little expressed disappointment at how his stint with Middlesex last summer panned out.

Injuries got in the way of game time. He said constant flights from London to Dublin played a part in his body breaking down, both Cricket Ireland and Middlesex wanting to use the asset for which they were paying. “Both people wanted a piece of the pie,” was his verdict. All parties were frustrated with how things were handled.

Middlesex wanted to see more of Little. Prior to a game against Surrey at the Oval, the fast bowler was doing sprints on the outfield to test out his hamstring, yet CI did not give permission for him to play in the game. The player did not want to travel home as much as he did, given the higher standard of the T20 Blast compared to the interpros. CI presumably would have liked more control over their prized asset.

All of which leaves his future uncertain. There has been talk of a two-year deal at Lord’s but it is understood that no firm contract offer is on the table. Middlesex may well not want to deal with an international board making decisions on player availability. CI could be happy having full control as Little bids to make the Test match XI in May.

When asked about contracts after the Oman game, Little said he didn’t know what comes next. Given how the situation panned out previously, it appears that concessions will have to be made for the relationship to continue.

In theory, so long as Little is based in London, playing for Middlesex makes sense. He has access to a familiar bowling coach in Tim Murtagh while training at county facilities with regular matches across formats. Maybe CI would prefer to have him back on Irish soil with their own coaches. Which would necessitate a move home. Can Ireland offer enough cricket of a sufficient quality to make that worthwhile?

Figures close to the situation suggest that Little will still train with Middlesex in the coming weeks. His actual playing future remains undecided.