Afghanistan and Ireland: welcome to the top table
June 22, 2017 10:09 AM   Subscribe

By a unanimous vote, Afghanistan and Ireland join ten other countries in having full ICC membership and Test status. This allows the nations to play the longer (five days per match) form of cricket. Ireland, currently champions of the World Cricket League, are understandably happy, as are Afghanistan who have played international cricket for only 13 years. While their next International fixtures are some way off - Ireland vs The Netherlands in August and Afghanistan vs Hong Kong in October, it is hoped Test series against the top sides will now be arranged quickly (by cricketing standards). The trailer to the acclaimed documentary "Out Of The Ashes" about Afghanistan's cricket journey, and a related documentary. Ireland defeating Pakistan in 2007.
posted by Wordshore (12 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Notionally good, but what's the point. The gap between the old Test nations and the rest hasn't durably closed in so many years. Every other World Cup, some associate member scores an upset in the league stage. But this hasn't translated to a permanent station of any of these teams at the upper echelon in terms of performance.

What's needed is for the players from associate countries to have regular repeated exposure to top-flight competition. Short of that, it'll be decades before any of the new teams are anything to reckon with, in ODIs or Tests.
posted by Gyan at 10:27 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


So who wants to join a sweep on how many years it will be before England are desperately batting out the last match of a Test series, trying to save the draw from Ireland?

In order to make it fair I'll have to think of a way to run it so I can give long odds on any number in double digits...
posted by howfar at 10:29 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


What's needed is for the players from associate countries to have regular repeated exposure to top-flight competition.

Yeah, my pisstaking aside, the damage done to the overall standard of national play, and the diversity and interest of the game, by the the absence of these opportunities is a pretty big deal, in my view.
posted by howfar at 10:33 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


What's needed is for the players from associate countries to have regular repeated exposure to top-flight competition. Short of that, it'll be decades before any of the new teams are anything to reckon with, in ODIs or Tests.

Isn't that what this works towards? Now Australia can play Afghanistan in a full on test. It's not going to be a full on five test series every two years - that wouldn't be good for either team. But every test Afghanistan plays will help them improve.

Also, I don't think it's realistic to expect it to take less than a decade to get the new teams competitive. There is only so much test cricket that can be played, especially now where there is so so much more money in T20 leagues.
posted by trialex at 4:37 PM on June 22, 2017


So, er...is there any cultural/historical issues around Irish cricket, it being such a quintessentially English sport?

Apologies if this is a stupid question.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:52 PM on June 22, 2017


trialex: Isn't that what this works towards?

Test status ought to be granted upon achievement. This is closer to aspirational bestowment.

The frequency of test matches is too low and played too far apart for it to be a robust training programme. Joining T20 leagues is exactly what players from these nations need.
posted by Gyan at 10:24 PM on June 22, 2017


So, er...is there any cultural/historical issues around Irish cricket, it being such a quintessentially English sport?

I don’t know the answer to this in any detail, but I know that the promotion of Gaelic sports was very much tied into Irish nationalism, including a ban on any foreign sports (i.e. English sports) being played at GAA grounds, and a ban on GAA members taking part in or watching non Gaelic games. So… probably?
posted by Bloxworth Snout at 12:42 AM on June 23, 2017


@Chrysostom

Not a stupid question at all. Historically cricket would broadly have been regarded as a 'garrison game', i.e. one played by a foreign invader. This attitude would have been much more prevalent in parts of Ireland that would be of a Catholic\Nationalist outlook and less so in parts that would be more of an Anglo-Irish\Unionist tradition. The game has always been played to some extent in Dublin and the other cities. It is becoming more popular all the time.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:46 AM on June 23, 2017


Chrysostom: "So, er...is there any cultural/historical issues around Irish cricket, it being such a quintessentially English sport?

Apologies if this is a stupid question.
"

Not at all a stupid question! I'm not very sporty, but I am Irish and I work about five minutes' walk from the Cork cricket club (where I watch the occasional match as an excuse to drink cider in the sunshine), so I'll fill in until somebody better-informed enters the thread. [On preview, I've been beaten to the punch twice, so I'll be long-winded and digressive where Bloxworth Snout and GallonOfAlan were to-the-point.]

Generally speaking, as mentioned above, the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) has traditionally been associated with Irish nationalism (as well as the Catholic Church — clubs' catchment areas are very often, although not always, defined by their local parish borders). Until 1971 the infamous Rule 27 forbade GAA members, on pain of expulsion, from playing non-Gaelic sports, which meant anything that wasn't hurling, (Gaelic) football, handball, or rounders.1 Rugby, soccer, and cricket were often referred to as the "garrison games" — that is, the sports played in the occupiers' barracks — and their aficionados derided as "West Brits" or "shoneens", two terms (both highly derogatory, but with slightly different connotations) for a perceived cultural inferiority complex. ("Shoneen" is possibly from seoinín, 'little John', as in John Bull.)

That culture has changed, however, with rapprochement in the North in the 90s and the gradual dying-off of the GAA hardliners. Croke Park, the St Peter's Basilica of Gaelic sports, is now regularly used as a venue for international rugby matches, for example. The division is informally perpetuated at the schools level: post-primary schools are likely to either play rugby and cricket or Gaelic games, with vanishingly little overlap. (I can't think of a single school around where I'm from that does both, although no doubt some exist.) The division lies along axes of both class and the urban-rural divide (i.e., posh city kids play rugby, by and large).

I should make it clear that any division is so blurry as to be almost nonexistent these days when it comes to what sports you follow. Soccer worship has long known no demographic boundaries. Rugby is huge, too, and seems to be gaining ground all the time (probably at soccer's expense, thanks to the Irish rugby team's continued success at international level).

Cricket remains much more of a niche sport. It's an entirely amateur sport — all the way up to the national team, although as far as I know there are a few Irish professionals in English cricket clubs — and I'm not entirely sure that the national team has been ever been terribly good, which doesn't help. (If we want heartbreak and humiliation on the world stage, we have the Irish soccer team for that.) I would say that it's still thought of as the most vestigially English of the "garrison games", but that is bound up with its eccentric rules, modes of dress, etc. In no way would attending a cricket match in Ireland be a tense affair, or anything like that, and no non-wanker would give you grief for doing so.

1 Yes, rounders! The GAA produced the first formal regulations for rounders in 1884. You are now guaranteed at least one point in the sports round of almost any Irish pub quiz.
posted by Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels at 3:16 AM on June 23, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ireland produced the only Nobel Prize winner who appears in Wisden. Name that person. I will wait...
posted by fallingbadgers at 10:19 AM on June 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


BBC: Ireland hope to secure England Test match following ICC status change

Deutrom praised the "part-time postmen, farmers and fabric salesmen" whose performances have helped Ireland achieve Test status.

"Cricket is arguably representative of the new Ireland like no other sport," he added.

"Globally, the visibility of this Irish national team dwarfs that of any other Irish sport and arguably any other Irish cultural export outside of Riverdance.

"In India, not many people have heard of Bono or Brian O'Driscoll, but they have heard of Kevin O'Brien and William Porterfield."
posted by Wordshore at 4:28 AM on June 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've been rather dismayed at the lack of test cricket in New Zealand's cricketing schedule for 2018, and had heard whispers that part of this was to do with leaving some slack to accommodate matches with any new entrants to the game after the ICC vote. I very much hope this is true. New Zealand played a large part in providing early test-match exposure for Zimbabwe in the early '90s and it would be nice to see this tradition continued.
What's needed is for the players from associate countries to have regular repeated exposure to top-flight competition.
A significant number of current Irish internationals have county-cricket contracts in England.
posted by Sonny Jim at 2:29 AM on June 25, 2017 [1 favorite]


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