On Wednesday Ireland begin a series of three fifty over matches against Sri Lanka A which for many in the home squad will be pivotal in determining their chance of heading to Australasia next February.

With the squads restricted to fifteen players for the World Cup there are a maximum of seven places still theoretically still up for grabs in the battle to wear the green shirt down under. The seven regular county players, none of whom are available this week, are certain to go as is Kevin O’Brien who is currently making a big statement in the Caribbean Premier League.

It is probable that the fourteen players who have been named for this week plus the rested John Mooney and Max Sorensen are the only realistic options to fill those seven places. Having said that, there still is a possibility that at least one the two young Surrey quick bowlers who hold Irish passports, Tom Curran and Matt Dunn, could force their way into the squad. The difficulty for them is that they will not be available for the only other matches Ireland have this season when Scotland come to Malahide in September.

Curran, a player whose eligibility was identified to the Ireland management by me last September, is out for the rest of the season through injury while Dunn will be playing for his county that week as the championship reaches its climax. Phil Simmons has, with good reason, been reluctant to pick non Irish born players who have not been involved in the Irish club scene. Indeed Tim Murtagh is the only player to have worn the national colours in modern times without first playing a match on the island.

However with the conditions in Australia and New Zealand vastly different to those encountered on the sub-continent in 2011 the can be little argument that a strong pace attack will be essential if Ireland are going to repeat their epic exploits of 2007 and 2011. It would be a surprise if at least one of Curran or Dunn, assuming that they have a desire to play for Ireland, is not included on the acclimatisation tour down under scheduled for later in the year when at least six games will be played.

Although none of them will be ODI’s I understand that they will generally be against strong opposition and therefor will be a legitimate test of Ireland’s strengths. The current Ireland ranks are not exactly teeming with guys who can get the ball down around 90 mph and while pace on its own should not be the sole determinant, if all else such as line and length are equal then the extra pace is always going to be of greater benefit.

There are six players in this week’s squad who get the ball down at varying rates of velocity and they will all recognise that at best only three of them will make the cut. In some ways the biggest pressure is on Graeme McCarter who, because he is a regular in the Gloucestershire T20 side, is only available for the first match on Wednesday and has to make the most of his one opportunity.

Graeme was one of the three pace bowlers who spent part of the winter in Australia which included coaching sessions with Craig McDermott and he appeared to have reaped the benefits of that when he broke into the Gloucestershire 4 day side at the start of the current season. He can count himself unfortunate to lose his place in the side after only two games as he took six wickets at an average of 24 with an economy rate of 3.3.

He has however played in all thirteen games of his county’s NatWest t20 Blast campaign and is his side’s leading wicket taker with 16 victims including the rarity of 5 wickets in an innings against Sussex when, entrusted with the last over of the match, he dismissed three of the opposition to ensure a narrow win. On the down side his economy rate, at 9.07 is the second poorest in the team and this is largely as a result of his last two matches when he has been savaged for 77 runs off just six overs.

It may be that the early season wickets had a bit more help than now and his lack of real pace ( the speed gun in his televised matches clocks him in the mid to high 70’s) makes him an easy target for the big hitters in the abbreviated format. However much more experienced bowlers than him have had days when the ball regularly disappears into orbit and whatever happens on Wednesday he will likely get another chance against the Scots unless he breaks back into the 4 day side.

Craig Young, Stuart Thompson and Peter Chase are the three quickest bowlers in the squad and having watched all three several times this season they have impressed me at various times while at other times displayed their inexperience. Young and Chase were the other two with McCarter in Australia and indeed Young made the Ireland squad to Bangladesh for the World T20 Cup although he didn’t get a game.

He has spells, particularly his opening spell, when he verges on being genuinely quick and can swing the new ball but can’t always reproduce that when he is called back into the attack. His development has been hampered by injury which curtailed his period with Sussex but now that he is fitter than at any time in career his ambition and hunger has returned and with it the determination to retain his place in the full squad.

Chase is also quick but is often wayward up front as he demonstrated again last Saturday in the Leinster Senior Cup final. When he gets his rhythm right as he did for Ireland A against MCC a few weeks ago he is capable of doing real damage to a batting line-up, albeit MCC were not particularly strong. He has a real opportunity this week to prove that he can cope against decent batsmen but either way it is another step on the road to match maturity ( he is not yet 21) and handled properly could well be one of the key members of the attack in the coming years.

Stuart Thompson at times has bowled as quickly as either Young or Chase particularly when they can’t get up to full throttle but he is definitely the most consistent of the trio. That he currently appears to have the edge on the other two was recognised last winter when he became a regular member of the full Ireland side. As he is also the much superior batsman of the trio it brings an added dimension to his game and he effectively has filled the role that the absent John Mooney has brought to the team for a number of years. Thompson’s immediate future in the starting eleven will probably be determined by whether or not Mooney overcomes his personal difficulties but it would be surprising if his name is not on the final list of 15 when the squad is announced early next year.

With Max Sorensen waiting in the wings, although he cannot be assured of his place and presumably will be included for the Scotland matches, Young, Thompson and Chase are in a shootout this week and while it is not necessarily the last chance saloon their performances will be crucial in deciding their destination next year.
Eddie Richardson and Barry McCarthy (who replaces McCarter in the squad for the final two games) are more medium pace than quick and will be competing with McCarter for the place in the Ireland squad monopolised by Alex Cusack for many years.

Now that it seems ever more likely that the Clontarf man’s aching body may no longer allow him to represent his adopted country again the pretenders are all on show this week. However there is no guarantee that Cusack’s role will be replicated especially in Australia where military medium bowlers often have to hoist the white flag unless like Bhuvneshwar Kumar you have other skills.

With the top six in the Ireland batting order pretty well set in stone there are no more than two other batting slots available in the squad and as many as six this week will feel that they have a shot at getting to the head of the queue.

The two Andrews, Poynter and Balbirnie, would be most observers choice as the leading contenders for the spare batting spots. Poynter did well in Bangladesh when he kept Niall O’Brien out of the T20 side but the roles were reversed when the full Sri Lanka team beat Ireland in the 50 over format in May. Poynter’s club and Inter-pro form has been outstanding this season and he is clearly rated highly by the selectors having been named captain for these games. I watched Balbirnie score cultured hundreds against North-West Warriors at the start of May and again a couple of weeks ago against MCC.

He reminds me of Ed Joyce as he always seems to have that extra smidgeon of time to play his shot and prefers to stroke the ball rather than bludgeon it. The Warriors knock was the really impressive one as it was on an early season wicket and the attack included the aforementioned Thompson and Young together with another team mate this week in Andy McBrine.

While the two Andrews may be regarded as favourites bookmakers are wealthy because favourites do not always win. A number of players born outside Ireland have been plying their trade in local club cricket hoping to catch Phil Simmons eye but most appear to have fallen by the wayside and it looks as if Nick Larkin is the last man standing.

His remarkable unbeaten 247 last season against Leinster Lightning seemed like the precursor to an untrammelled march into the Ireland side but while he continues to look the part he keeps getting out without converting good starts into meaningful scores. He will hope that his USP of learning to bat in his native Sydney gives him the edge if all things are equal but all things will not be equal if he doesn’t get scores this week that convince those who matter that he is worth persisting with.

John Anderson has been somewhat unfortunate in that injury has disrupted his season and denied him the opportunity to build on his performances to date for Ireland. In his 12 innings he is averaging 40 including a hundred and three fifties.

However all but two of his innings have been in the multi-day game which suggests that he is viewed more as a specialist in the longer format rather than being able to transcend all three. This week gives John the chance to prove that he can score at a sufficient rate in the 50 over format to warrant further debate when the squad is ultimately selected.

Another man who has been pigeon holed as a longer format specialist in recent years is Andrew White. This week he will become the most capped player in Ireland history when he crosses the boundary rope for the 227th time.

He has an extraordinary record in the Intercontinental Cup but it is almost two years since he batted for Ireland in anything other than a multi-day match. Apart from his 4,505 runs he will be quick to remind you that he has also picked up 122 wickets.

Given that he is in the squad this week then it is reasonable to conclude that should he get meaningful runs he is in the mix for Australasia. Most would reckon that he is a longshot but White will give it everything and he does have the determination to put the cat among the pigeons.

Chris Dougherty may be the least likely of the six to push himself into the final mix but weight of runs can always move one up the pecking order and in both the early season games in Sri Lanka and in the MCC match Chris showed that he is well capable of scoring them. However he always seems to be in the shadow of Balbirnie as invariably Andrew is at the wicket when Chris is scoring runs.

Should Ireland take a second specialist spinner to Australia, and they probably will, then Andy McBrine has won that contest hands down as he has seen off all other challengers. The fact that he also proving himself to be a decent middle order batsman has done his cause no harm.

The wicketkeeper this week is Stuart Poynter, Andrews’s younger brother, and at this stage he will not be challenging either Gary Wilson or Niall O’Brien’s pre-eminence with the large gloves so he will require a lot of runs to compete for a batting spot.

The opposition this week has a very different look to it compared to the provisional squad announced last April and now has only three players with ODI experience. Two of those, skipper Ashan Priyanjan and Kusal Perera, played in Sri Lanka’s comprehensive win over Ireland in May.

It is primarily a young ambitious squad who should not be underestimated and put Durham to the sword last weekend -a game incidentally in which Stuart Poynter made his first team debut and scored an enterprising 36. They will unquestionably be a much higher standard of opposition than that provided recently by MCC and will be determined to emulate the success of their senior players last May.

For Ireland the result is less important than the individual performances and it will be fascinating to see who, when the pressure is on, can stand up and shout out to the selectors “pick me”.

The forecast is for excellent weather and all three games start at 10.45am with the first on Wednesday at Stormont. Admission is free so come along and watch what will be at least a third of the Ireland squad that heads to Australasia next year.