England must be wary of underdogs whose domestic scene sets up Bazball v Ireball

This will be their seventh Test and if it follows the pattern of the previous six, it will end in defeat despite the four-day format increasing the chances of a draw.

Slow starts are nothing new for teams trying to establish themselves among the Test-match elite.

India, who were admitted to the top table in 1932, took 25 matches to record their first win, while New Zealand needed 45 Tests to gain victory, so it can take time.

Even those more recently promoted like Bangladesh and Zimbabwe were slow to settle (the pair taking 38 and 31 matches respectively to win their first Tests).

Such lengthy apprenticeships are not preordained and Afghanistan, who were awarded Test status at the same time as Ireland, won their third Test while Pakistan, who made the jump in 1952, won their second.

Most of those countries had a thriving domestic game to underpin their ambitions, something Ireland doesn’t share, at least in red-ball cricket. In an attempt to address that, something approaching a long-form competition, the Inter-Provincial Championship, first appeared there in 2015 though first-class status was not awarded for another few years.

Even then, the long-format season comprised just three regional teams playing each other twice; hardly a powerful springboard to greater things or an attractor of talent in a country where cricket is seen as a minor sport behind soccer, rugby, hurling and Gaelic football.

Progress was further hampered when the Inter-Provincial Championship was cancelled during the pandemic, a setback from which it has yet to return, which suggests the will for it, at least domestically, isn’t really there.

If it weren’t for Afghanistan having a similarly sketchy red-ball fixture list, you might be forgiven for thinking Ireland had gained Test-match membership, and the enhanced fee payments such status attracts from the International Cricket Council, under false pretences. Except that the ICC must have known the lie of the land all along.

One of ICC’s core missions is to grow the game internationally. Another is to protect and preserve the primacy of its members. Here, one jeopardises the other, especially when that expansion includes teams with scant hope of sustaining a competitive team. Such things risk the dilution of Test cricket, a foolhardy move in a landscape where the old certainties of bilateral internationals are being increasingly threatened by the speculative, private leagues of franchise cricket.

Ireland could help themselves more by getting their best players to commit to Test cricket. Josh Little, a 23-year-old left-arm bowler of pace and skill, has just played for Gujarat Titans in the final of the Indian Premier League yet 
has never managed a single Test 
for Ireland.

If you allow your best players to cherry-pick when and where they play, your priorities don’t lie with making a go of Test cricket.

Little’s case explains why Ireland’s Test team contains several players from South Africa, such as pace bowler Graham Hume and all-rounder Curtis Campher.

Without a reliable source of home-grown players the reliance on imports, itself unreliable, 
will increase.

To me it seems obvious that Ireland’s focus is on white-ball cricket. Their domestic set-up is geared towards it, as is the mentality of most of their players.

Of course playing red-ball cricket with white-ball skills is what Bazball is all about so maybe Andrew Balbirnie’s team will fare better against Ben Stokes’ England than many are predicting. Their batsmen certainly verge on the cavalier, with Paul Stirling and Harry Tector both fine ball-strikers who prowl the middle-order.

Stirling, one of Warwickshire’s overseas players for white-ball cricket, recently made his maiden Test hundred against Sri Lanka in Galle.

When Ireland last played a Test against England in 2019, nine of the side had experience with various English county sides, the association providing them with a sound cricketing education. But Ireland’s Test-match status has meant their players can only play for counties as overseas players, of which Stirling is the lone example.

Ireland’s bowling attack comprises mostly medium-pace swing bowlers, though Hume, who reminds me of Zimbabwe’s Eddo Brandes, can hustle it through at a decent lick.

With Lord’s pitches rarely aiding spin, it may be prudent to replace the specialist spinner, Andy McBrine, with spinning all-rounder George Dockrell, to lengthen the batting order.

But if the visitors are to combat Bazball with ‘Ireball’, prudence won’t come into it.

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