Sport

Cricket Ireland announces in-depth review following T20 World Cup exit

Quality of facilities to be a key point of concern amid worries about player development

Cricket Ireland will conduct a review following the men’s exit from the T20 World Cup at the hands of Namibia. Photograph: Pankaj Nangia/Inpho

Nathan Johns
Fri Oct 29 2021 - 11:06

Cricket Ireland has announced the commencement of an in-depth review following the men’s exit from the T20 World Cup.

In a statement released on Friday morning, the governing body’s chair Ross McCollum spoke of the time sensitive nature of such a review given both the return of World Cup Super League action in January and next February’s qualifying tournament for the 2022 T20 World Cup.

Among other things, the review will analyse preparation for the tournament, performance and selection, coaching structures and the administrative side of Cricket Ireland’s operations.

The biggest point of concern for this review will be the quality and availability of cricket facilities in the country with McCollum outlining how the provision of facilities has been elevated to a “crucial priority for the organisation.”

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The issue of facilities has dominated attention ever since Ireland’s exit from the competition last week. After a defeat to Sri Lanka in the side’s second match, captain Andrew Balbirnie alluded to how Ireland’s facilities were holding them back.

Facing a Sri Lanka attack regularly capable of pushing 145 km/h (90mph) on a fast track, some Irish batters struggled to score consistently while others were dismissed by the short ball. In the post-match press conference, Balbirnie spoke of the difficulty of preparing to face such fast bowling on a skiddy pitch:

“We don’t prepare for it” he admitted.

“We don’t get wickets like this. We don’t get pace like that too often back home. Certainly club cricket, club grounds around the countries, unfortunately can’t really get wickets like that, but look, the more we go up the levels, it’s only going to get quicker, and we’ve got to adapt quickly.

“We’re perfectly capable of playing quick bowling. I’m not saying we’re not.

“It’s sort of skiddier to what we’d be used to, but particularly under the lights it obviously skids on, but I love that challenge and I think a lot of our batters do.

“We’ve just got to back our skills and take it head on and take the challenge on and not shy away from it.”

Head coach Graham Ford also referenced the facilities issue in the lead up to the tournament when asked about his players playing franchise cricket around the world. Ford is very encouraging of Irish players playing in big domestic tournaments since consistent access to world-class facilities can only be a good thing for development.

How often Cricket Ireland can provide such facilities has come under scrutiny. Earlier this year, the men’s senior squad prepared for a home series against Zimbabwe in Millfield school in Somerset, England, rather than at home in Ireland.

The goals of this review would suggest the governing body has acknowledged that it needs to do more on this front. Some developments in this regard are already underway, such as the investigation into the use of hybrid pitch technology, a system of blending grass with artificial fibres.

Many other countries have been using hybrid pitches at their grounds with the aim of improving the performance and durability of surfaces. Cricket Ireland hopes to implement these pitches from 2022, though no detail as of yet has been provided as to where they might be located.

Since Ireland’s World T20 exit, much has been made of the poor quality of turf pitches at the high performance centre. Laid in 2019, these pitches failed to pass the testing phase and still have not yet been used. Cricket Ireland has announced that urgent work is taking place and they hope for them to be ready by mid-summer 2022.

It would appear that both of these developments will be implemented for the 2022 summer cricket season. The two events referenced by Cricket Ireland above, January’s World Cup Super League and February’s World T20 qualifiers, take place long before then.

Plans also remain in place to discuss the development of a national cricket stadium with the Irish government and Sport Ireland.

Given the problems with smaller, more everyday facilities such as training pitches, it seems like a bigger project to build new stadium will come much further down the pipeline.