On St Patricks Day Ireland will begin their sixth successive campaign at an ICC World Cup final tournament. Yet the top Associate team will not have any sense of complacency as they face up to Zimbabwe, who ironically were their first opponents when Ireland made their debut on the world stage in Sabina Park, Jamaica in 2007.

That last ball tie was the catalyst that propelled Ireland cricket to a level of performance and recognition beyond the expectations of all but the most supreme of optimists or dreamy romantics. Since that day Ireland has beaten half of the ten Test playing nations and together with their domination of the Associate world, they were instrumental in convincing the ICC to put a cat flap in the door to the elite world of cricket’s star chamber.

There was no expectation in those glorious days in 2007 but each subsequent success has changed that situation and for Ireland, qualifying for World Cups is no longer enough; winning matches against Full Members is now the goal. The latest win against a top ten team was just a couple of weeks ago when Sabina Park again provided the backdrop for two T20 matches against the West Indies.

However it was obvious from the muted celebrations when Kevin O’Brien hit the winning runs that victory was no longer regarded as a wondrous event. Indeed their disappointment when Ireland failed in the second match in a game that they could and in truth should have won was a greater measure of their expectation levels than winning two days earlier.

Despite winning two matches on the six game tour, there are some worrying signs that hopefully will be addressed prior to the St Patricks Day encounter. The stats for the tour make for interesting reading. The batting averages are as follows:

PLAYER	M	I	NO	RUNS	BALLS	S/R	HS	AVE
G WILSON	6	6	0	145	237	61.18	62	24.17
A POYNTER	6	6	0	105	150	70.00	54	17.50
K O’BRIEN	6	6	1	97	117	82.91	39	19.40
N O’BRIEN	4	4	0	95	147	64.63	44	23.75
S THOMPSON	5	4	0	87	109	79.82	33	21.75
E JOYCE	3	3	1	75	107	70.09	40*	37.50
M SORENSEN	6	5	1	68	80	85.00	29	17.00
W PORTERFIELD	6	6	0	62	141	43.97	25	10.33
A CUSACK	4	3	0	50	82	60.98	30	16.67
G DOCKRELL	6	4	3	20	31	64.52	9*	20.00
P STIRLING	4	4	0	17	29	58.62	11	4.25
A McBRINE	3	3	0	17	42	40.48	8	5.67
T MURTAGH	5	4	2	12	33	36.36	4	6.00
J MOONEY	1	1	0	9	24	37.50	9	9.00
C YOUNG	1	1	0	1	5	20.00	1	1.00
J SHANNON	0

In the four 50 over games and two T20’s only Gary Wilson and Andrew Poynter aggregated more than a hundred runs. Ed Joyce, who only played in the final three matches, was the only batsman to average more than 25. When Ireland has been successful, invariably the opening pair of William Porterfield and Paul Stirling has got the innings off to a rollicking start. They did it time and time again in the World T20 Qualifiers last November and it is unusual for both to fail consistently.

However in the West Indies both had a miserable time and in ten innings between them they could only muster 79 runs. Stirling in particular couldn’t buy a run scoring just 17 in total and had a poorer strike rate than ten of his colleagues. Of all of the batsmen Porterfield was the only one to strike at less than 50 per hundred balls.

Their joint failure inevitably put much more pressure on the other batsmen who were left with the dilemma of trying to score quickly or consolidating and thereby reducing the chance of a competitive total. At times they fell between two stools and ended up doing neither and invariably give their wicket away through a rash shot as the overs ran out. In the four 50 over games Ireland only passed 200 on one occasion and that was by just two runs.

In the six games there were only four partnerships that exceeded fifty with Poynter involved in two of those. If Ireland are to qualify from the first round of World T20 Cup it is imperative that at least one of the opening partnership gets a meaningful score to relieve the pressure on the following batsmen and transfers the pressure to the opposition.

The bowling averages are as follows:

	OVERS	MDNS	RUNS	WICKETS	AVE	E/R
A CUSACK	20	2	112	6	18.67	5.60
K O’BRIEN	19	2	107	6	17.83	5.63
M SORENSEN	25	0	139	5	27.80	5.56
G DOCKRELL	33.4	2	155	5	31.00	4.60
T MURTAGH	28	1	174	4	43.50	6.21
S THOMPSON	10	0	61	4	15.25	6.10
A POYNTER	3	0	24	2	12.00	8.00
P STIRLING	20	4	73	2	36.50	3.65
A McBRINE	25	2	90	1	90.00	3.60
J MOONEY	3	0	21	0		7.00
C YOUNG	4	0	21	0		5.25

While Alex Cusack and Kevin O’Brien each took six wickets the plaudits go to Cusack as all of his wickets came in the T20 internationals where he averaged 4.67 runs per wicket and an economy rate of 3.5. Given the conditions that Ireland will encounter in Bangladesh it is significant that the three main spin options had the best economy rates of all the bowlers.

The ongoing Asia Cup clearly demonstrated that unless you have genuine speed the most successful bowlers take pace off the ball. However if Ireland are to go with three spin bowlers then one of the seamers will lose his place. Given that Stuart Thompson was impressive with bat and ball either Sorensen or Murtagh could be struggling to retain their place.

Only in the first T20 did both batting and bowling deliver on the same day. That needs to be replicated on St Patricks Day if Ireland is going to be contending in the second week of the tournament. They have done it before and are well capable of doing it again.

Afghanistan reinforced the case that Ireland has made for proper recognition of the top Associates by competing very credibly in Bangladesh in the Asia Cup. Their impressive win over the hosts had been preceded by a match against Pakistan that they could well have won if Shenwari had held a straightforward catch offered by Umar Akmal when he was on 28 and the score was 146 for 6. Pakistan went on to add a hundred runs in the last thirteen overs thanks largely to Akmal who made a not out century.

If Afghanistan had won that game the subsequent victory over Bangladesh would have moved them above Ireland in the ODI rankings. Now well and all as Afghanistan competed in the Asia Cup it is incongruous that they could have been ranked above Ireland. It is four years since Ireland lost to their Afghan rivals and have since beaten them five times in limited overs format and Ireland were well ahead in an I Cup match when rain delays prevented an inevitable victory.

However given the crucial battles coming up over the next four years it is worthwhile reflecting on the potential of our foremost opponents for Test recognition. As they have proved throughout the Asia Cup they have a very good bowling attack that contains both real pace and decent spin options. Their top pace bowler Hamid Hassan has been injured for most of the last twelve months and broke down again in his only match in this tournament. There can be little argument that they have a more formidable attack than Ireland notwithstanding Ireland’s demolition of that attack in the T20 Qualifier Final in Abu Dhabi last November.

Their weakness is that batting and fielding let them down when under pressure although regular games against Full Members will go a long way to rectifying those problems. They also have the advantage of being a relatively young team with only one member of the squad hitting the 30 mark and that by only a few weeks.

If the other Asian teams continue to support their development and give them regular matches it would be foolhardy to believe that they cannot overtake Ireland in the not too distant future. There is no question but that Ireland has much more experience and has many players regularly competing at a higher level than the Afghans. However there is no clear evidence that any player who has come into the Ireland ranks in the past year is a better option that those that they have replaced. Only Stuart Thompson has had some real success but he has only had a few games to date and he will need to reproduce and indeed enhance his initial potential.

This season’s interpro’s will be a vital component in developing talent for the future across all disciplines. While Phil Simmons may be very certain of most of the names of the players who will be boarding the flight to New Zealand next year there is likely to be spots available for as many as four players provided they can deliver the goods over the next six months.

Finally the Star Sports commentators covering the Asia Cup rivalled the West Indian commentators during Ireland’s tour. Their utter crassness when discussing Afghanistan will resonate with Ireland supporters as they have also had to put up with unmitigated rubbish from so-called experts.

I watched virtually every ball of Afghanistan’s games and listened to them being patronised and simultaneously dismissed even when they were winning. They were accused of lack of skills as they put Bangladesh to the sword and their greatest asset apparently was their enthusiasm. Unsurprisingly several commentators had little knowledge of their standing in world cricket although one highly paid oaf opined that Afghanistan were head and shoulders above the other “minnows”.

Oh for a Richie Benaud or a John Arlott, men who took the trouble to research the teams and players that they would be commentating on, rather than relying on banal ignorance from themselves and assuming that their audience is equally as ignorant.