There have been great mini-series. I rather liked Camarena, The Drug Wars back in the day. There have been less than great mini-series too. This one looks like a less than great one, and there really isn’t anyone to blame for that other than Father Time. When Sam Billings came back from the IPL, spouting nonsense, that the opposition would be petrified of England, the World ranked #5 team in the format, I do believe, I could be charitable and say he was thinking of Ireland. He obviously wasn’t, but let’s be nice for once.
Tomorrow’s game is at Lord’s, which is nice. A load of teams would give their eye teeth to play an ODI at Lord’s, so it’s bloody disgraceful we haven’t up to now. After all they are our near neighbours, a source of some players, and a potential nice little rivalry if cricket develops the way we all hope it will worldwide. But it is what it is, and Ireland will be feeling a lot of pressure after the display at Bristol which wasn’t so much as lacklustre, as totally dull. Only a couple of players did themselves justice, and they’ll hope that more will come to play this time around.
England, in truth, never needed to get out of the low gears. The relative brevity of the game had one advantage, as I got to hear a lot of less of the increasingly annoying Nasser Hussain, but in other facets, it wasn’t really a great run out for England to test their mettle. England did the bowling job well, but these aren’t the top drawer players, and yet we know a number of the Irish can do a lot better. Jason Roy will need some time under his belt (and the irony of the sky punditry giving us the “it’s the way he plays” defence is really not lost on me) and Alex Hales was also extremely fortunate to get away with his early errors. England to bat first would be the recipe for a bit of batting practice, but the way of this world is to do the job in as an efficient manner as possible.
I have to say I never expected a great display from Ireland, so Friday wasn’t a surprise, but I would love to see one. Where we are pushed, hard, and to blow this bloody complacency that I see in certain sections. Tomorrow is just another day, as Suggs and the boys once sung, but I see another grey day for the boys in green.
Let’s hope not. For my big Irish cricket fan mate if nothing else. He’ll be there tomorrow, and if you sit next to him, or near him, you’ll probably hear him!
Comments below……
Being Outside Cricket 
I’ll be listening in Our House, although My Girl won’t. I hope there’s no reason to tell Ireland “You’re an Embarrassment”.They just need One Better Day, to make their critics Shut Up.
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Does not look like they’re having one. In fairness, they plateaued a few years ago, and that is when the ECB made the confident decision to finally take them on in England. The reverse has happened with the ECB and Bangladesh. Bangladesh have improved, ergo England won’t play them in England for another 8 years or so.
That is meritocracy, Giles Clarke style.
Cricket Ireland are not without fault, but it is hard to sustain quality, when the Full Members have done everything in their power to wait out the accidental good players to grow old, and then beat the Irish when they’re old, and have not been able to replace some key players.
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I do wish Ireland could play a strong game, especially at Lords and even beat England. The England team just seem to be getting ” too big for their boots” . They need to be pulled back into line and stop believing all the media write ups. Could someone tell me why all the Counties play their 50 over games on the same day as the Ire v Eng test??
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Apocalypse cancelled:
http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/story/1096618.html
Or merely postponed? There’s a lot to be played out with this yet….
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It is the time of year for mayflies but even mayflies have access to the interweb these days:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/jan/26/india-icc-proposal-ecb-cricket-australia
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But all they have agreed…….. is to come for the Champions trophy haven’t they?
This doesn’t solve the underlying issue regards the carving up of the money at the ICC. Am I wrong?
If I’m not, then you would hope Selvey would understand this. By making a tactical withdrawal from boycotting this tournament they have won favour from the big cheeses, (particularly the ECB who were looking at their big summer going down the bog)
They have fired a warning shot across the bow of international cricket. They have backed down for now, but for how long?
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I’d be interested to see the accounting behind this claim:
I suspect the accounting amounts to, “it’s what Giles has told me”. Presumably it’s based on declining Indian TV revenues for international cricket – and possibly on anticipated increased ECB revenues based on a Sky/BT bidding war?
Anyway, now that India don’t bring so much money I’m looking forward to all those five-Test series against them being cancelled and instead of seeing Ishant Sharma again we’ll no doubt be having lots of Kane Williamson and Tamim Iqbal in the future. Hurrah!
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Selvey seems to have completely changed his tune. In 2014 he was eulogising the big 3, and claiming the tv money deal was fine because India had agreed to lots of tours with the minnows and a 2 division championship.
Now he appears to be saying India are no big deal. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
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More “posturing” (TM Selve):
http://www.espncricinfo.com/india/content/story/1096647.html
Worth it if only for this:
“ESPNcricinfo understands that N Srinivasan, the former BCCI president and one of the architects of the Big Three model, joined the SGM via video-call. According to an official who was present, Srinivasan said that the governance changes approved at the ICC’s meeting should be of greater concern to the Indian board than the finance model”.
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Will the BCCI be fined for posting their squad two weeks after the ‘closing’ date?
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The media seem to be delighting in heaping enormous pressure on Ireland for this game. ” They must deliver today at Lords or they will be doomed for eternity.” Is the jist of the coverage.
How the hell is this going to help their players relax, and play with a bit more freedom? Some of the media seem to want failure from Ireland, and are delighting in claiming Ireland should not get more cricket. By upping the stakes for this one game they are making it a self for-filling prophecy.
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It often seems like the cricket media sees its entire purpose in heaping pressure on players, except for a few chosen ones. Most of the time their own players, too.
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Also, really happy about how Rashid batted. Take that, Nasser Hussain!
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An innings lacking in confidence. We could all see that….
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To be fair, it was less the confidence and more the “His job now is to give the strike back to Bairstow” when he came in. Sometimes I do wonder if those people ever watch any cricket…
(Like Atherton in India going on about how Root wasn’t hogging the strike when he was batting with Woakes.)
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Matt Dwyer, the ECB’s Director of Participation & Growth, was on TMS during the innings break talking about the All Stars Cricket scheme. This is the ECB’s latest scheme to bring youngsters into the game, by having special coaching sessions for 5-8 year olds including their own kit backpack, hat & t-shirt for £40.
Unless I misheard him, he said that they expected around 20,000 kids to sign up this year. This is quite a change in tune from March, when the ECB apparently expected 50,000 girls and boys to be involved. https://www.ecb.co.uk/news/353698
So it seems like this will be yet another expensive and wasteful failure by the ECB. Will anyone get fired for this, or is it business as usual at the ECB?
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