Back in January we eagerly anticipated what promised to be the most exciting and crucial year in the history of international cricket on this island. First up was the World Cup in Australasia followed by a dessert of home ODI’s against England and Australia.

In July Ireland jointly hosted the World T20 Qualifier with the final stages in Dublin following group matches in Scotland, Stormont and Bready. Perhaps the most crucial fixtures of all were the opening Intercontinental Cup matches that hopefully would lead to the Test Challenge matches in 2018.

It is only six months since that heady night in Nelson when West Indies were put to the sword yet it now seems much longer. The champagne nights down under in February and March had, by the end of July, been replaced by flat beer in Malahide.

In front of a bemused full house on a sunny Saturday afternoon Ireland, for the third time in ten days, lost their way against a fellow Associate. The much vaunted batting line up who had demolished the West Indies and Zimbabwean attacks earlier in the year on alien surfaces, couldn’t muster 130 runs against either PNG, Hong Kong or the Dutch on home turf. It has been suggested in some quarters that the absence of Ed Joyce was the key difference.

I have regularly described Ed as the classiest batsman ever to come out of Ireland and the last thing that this team needs is for the lynchpin in the longer forms of the game to injure himself in the frenetic hurly-burly that characterises T20. The reality is that Ed is 37 next month, has a dodgy hip and does not even contemplate playing T20 for Sussex.

The really scary thought is that if it were true that Ireland need Joyce to beat fellow Associates in T20 cricket then the future is as murky as the personal lives of certain members of the House of Lords.

For what it is worth Ireland made it to India early next year but after that T20 cricket at international level for Ireland has been rendered redundant as the next time it will have any meaning is, thanks to the progressive thinking of the ICC, in the 2019 qualifier for the T20 WC in 2020.

As for the 50 over format there is not much to look forward to there either. As happened following Ireland’s performances in India in 2011, when the format was amended to allow four Associates into this year’s version, there were genuine hopes that the same thing would happen for 2019 especially given Ireland’s even better display in Australasia. However in Malahide last month ICC CEO Dave Richardson emphatically dismissed that possibility while confirming that the overriding reason is that India has to be guaranteed nine matches and the ten team format is the only sure way of achieving that.

Richardson then reiterated his usual old guff about what ICC is doing for Associate cricket and the global development of the game and that how Ireland and Afghanistan have every chance of qualifying automatically from the ranking table. He managed to keep a straight face while he was saying this but at least his appearance was not the sight of the strut of Giles Clarke in the VIP area at Malahide on semi-final day.

The Australians come to Belfast in a couple of weeks’ time but after that nothing is definite. There are suggestions that Ireland will play ODI’s in Zimbabwe on the way to their I Cup match in Namibia in October but nothing has yet been confirmed. The same applies to rumours of two matches each against Sri Lanka and Pakistan next summer but even if they all happen it is difficult to see the likelihood of Ireland totalling 20 ODI’s against Full Members this side of the 2018 World Cup qualifier.

The only certainty left is that Ireland has six more Intercontinental Cup matches between this October and late 2017. After the Ed Joyce, Paul Stirling and Craig Young inspired winning start against UAE in early June, Namibia are next up in Windhoek in October followed by PNG in the spring of 2016. There was a suggestion that the PNG match would be played in Darwin or Cairns but my understanding is that because of the extreme heat at that time of year the most likely venue is now Brisbane where Ireland defeated UAE in the World Cup.
Ireland’s only other game next year is an autumn home fixture against Hong Kong before 2017 sees the final three games with a summer match at home to Netherlands sandwiched between treks to the UAE for decisive matches against Afghanistan and Scotland.

This time there is no final in the I Cup. Whichever side tops the table after the final simultaneous round of matches in UAE in late 2017 will play the bottom ranked Test side (almost certainly Zimbabwe) in four challenge matches in 2018. Should the Associate side win that challenge then they will play a full Test match in 2019. How many more they would play over the following three years is another question altogether. Of course should the Associate fail to win the challenge then it will be 2022 before an Associate has another crack at it.

Ireland is a clear favourite to retain the Cup which they have won four times out of the six editions and are the current holders. However there are a number of factors that might mean that it will be anything but a valedictory march for our “golden generation”.

Afghanistan will be a main challenger again but the resurgence of Scotland should not be underestimated particularly if they can get their first choice eleven on the park. The final match of the tournament pits the two Celtic nations against one another and that could turn out to be the most crucial four days in the three year cycle.

PNG won their first ever four-day match when they beat a virtually full strength Netherlands team in Amsterdam in June. A double century partnership for the fourth wicket by A Vala and MD Dai saw them home by 5 wickets as they chased down 305 to ensure that they will not be taken lightly for the remainder of the tournament.

Ireland’s next opponents Namibia comfortably saw off Hong Kong in their opening match in Windhoek and are joint table toppers with Ireland. The format where each side only play each other once leaves little margin for error and a couple of bad sessions could be enough to derail ambitions.

However the biggest question of all is whether or not this group of players can go to the well one more time. Albeit that it was in a different format there were signs last month that the consistent excellence that differentiated Ireland from the rest of the Associate nations was no longer a given.

Back in February 2012 in the early stages of the previous I Cup campaign Ireland scraped home against Kenya in Mombasa with a team that has changed little in the meantime and effectively is the same group of players across all three formats. There is no doubt that these players are determined to see it through to get the chance of playing Test cricket and their experience in the four day format clearly should give them the edge.

But the fear factor that saw Ireland as the Associate equivalent of the All Blacks is no longer there to the same extent as demonstrated during the World Cup when UAE pushed Ireland a lot closer than the West Indies managed. The T20 Qualifiers last month was yet another example of the narrowing gap as the aura surrounding the Irish players dissipates as the other sides become more familiar with their methodology and style of play.

Andrew Balbirnie has made the breakthrough to the 50 over team in the past few months but is still unproven at four day level and despite their batting problems Middlesex have yet to give him his County Championship debut. Yet he is the only batsman to have usurped the regular top six in recent years. Players such as John Anderson and the Poynter brothers have only made the four day side when some or all of the county players were missing.

The potential dilemma is the form of some of the county batsmen. While they have all been tried and trusted for many years there are signs that this season the light no longer burns as fiercely. In a column this time last year I noted how well the county batsmen were doing and by last August William Porterfield, Paul Stirling, Ed Joyce, Niall O’Brien and Gary Wilson had accumulated 3291 runs between them at an average of 47.1.

This year is very different as they have not yet reached 2000 runs and the average has dropped to 32.2. Porterfield has been dropped from the Warwickshire county eleven after only scoring 133 runs in eight innings while Stirling has only batted six times which garnered him a mere 108 runs, a return that cost him his place.

While Joyce still leads the pack with 600 runs his batting this season is a far cry from his dominance of the county season last year with his average plummeting from 63.3 to a current 28.6. Match winning performances with the bat in the last few days by O’Brien and Wilson has boosted their aggregates to 568 and 588 respectively and both now average in the 40’s.

The problem for Ireland is that no Ireland qualified player has made a breakthrough into a county first eleven since Stirling made his debut for Middlesex. The question is can these key players sustain sufficient form until the end of 2017 without being pressurised for their place by ambitious young batsmen. The home scene is largely dominated by professionals and others not qualified for Ireland and while the clubs may be happy about that it is not benefitting the International side.

While it is great that the U15’s won the European Championship there is little likelihood of any making the grade at senior level during the duration of the I Cup. The U19’s looked on course to qualify for the World Cup but a conservative batting approach in their earlier games failed to boost their NRR and that cost them dearly in a final day defeat to Scotland.

There are some promising batsmen in the squad such as Jack Tector, who is getting some valuable 2nd eleven county experience with Glamorgan, while the McClintock twins and Rory Anders have also displayed promise. However they are all some way from challenging the players in situ and that is a concern.

The big worry going into the T20 matches was the bowling as the success of the batting was wrongly assumed not to be an issue. As we now know it turned out the other way around although through that wonderful medium of hindsight we should have realised that if the home based bowlers couldn’t deliver on Irish wickets when could they.

The history of our bowling attack outside these shores does not make for pretty reading over the past couple of years and there is little sign that anything is going to change anytime soon. John Mooney and Kevin O‘Brien may look like world beaters with the ball on a damp Stormont wicket or a low slow Malahide but as we know from bitter experience it is very different when they are leading the attack elsewhere.

Craig Young apart no-one has put their hand up to say “give me a place” and with both Alex Cusack and Tim Murtagh at the wrong end of their careers there are no obvious replacements. Murtagh is no longer assured of his county spot for the first time in many years and his return of just 27 wickets for the season is paltry by his normal standards.

George Dockrell is still our leading spinner but his county career has also nose-dived and he never got close to the Somerset first team this season while his loan spell to Sussex saw him play just the one match where his return of 0-180 off 44 overs was his one and only outing.

There are a few players making a mark in county second elevens such as Stuart Poynter, Mark Adair, Bobby Gamble (who I believe is potentially the next breakthrough bowler), Barry McCarthy and Robert McKinley who did very well for Loughborough College. However the standard at second eleven county cricket is a considerable distance from International level but at least it is competitive.

At some point over the next couple of years the Ireland coach and selectors are going to have to take a gamble (pun intended) on one or more of the younger brigade as the odds are against the entire current crop surviving until the end of 2017. I sincerely hope that I am wrong and that the players who have transformed Ireland cricket are still around to see the Holy Grail as they certainly deserve.