World Twenty20: Ireland and Scotland battle for places in main draw

William Porterfield will lead Ireland as they seek to qualify next week

The experienced William Porterfield will lead Ireland as they seek to qualify (Getty)

Ireland have had many moments. Scotland have had rather fewer. But in both countries, cricket is gathering a healthy following, which their national teams have been instrumental in growing.

The regular forays into ICC tournaments have taken it to hitherto uncharted places in both countries. Yet both have their hands full in the World Twenty20.

Ireland will almost certainly need to overcome Bangladesh to qualify for the main draw. Bangladesh are not only playing in conditions with which they are more familiar, they have found timely form in the Asia Cup. But these days, Ireland have plenty of tournament nous. In the past eight years they have beaten half the full member nations of the ICC, most famously England on a sensational night in Bangalore in 2011.

They will be led by William Porterfield, who has been their captain in 45 of their official T20 internationals (as well as in 61 of the last 74 ODIs). Porterfield has grown into the job and he has been at the helm while Ireland have made unprecedented progress on and off the field.

Their team will rely largely on the hard-nosed veterans – the O’Brien brothers, Kevin and Niall, are still around and the fast bowler Boyd Rankin has returned after his brief excursion with England – but there is also a strong culture of developing their own.

Ireland’s opening fixture is against Oman on Wednesday. Scotland are in action on the competition’s opening day against the mercurial Afghanistan.

The Scots have had five warm-up matches in India. Their fielding is as adroit as any team’s, major or minor, and they have kept pace with the demands of contemporary T20.

Preston Mommsen, their South Africa-born captain, conveys an impression of being a deep thinker about the game. Their key match might be against Zimbabwe next Thursday.

Cricket pays lip service to the notion of a level playing-field, as events in India are imminently to demonstrate. The ICC would say they have moved towards a less unfair process by ensuring that only eight countries qualified for the main draw as of right, which meant that two of the 10 full members, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, who were ninth and 10th in the rankings at the cut-off point, were placed in the first mini-competition.

There is also, the ICC might claim, a possible extra difficulty pointed up by research released this week by economists from Sheffield and Nottingham universities. This examined 35 years of one-day internationals, the 50-over version of the game, and seemingly discovered that supporters are deterred by one-sided matches. They would rather see a close contest between two minor teams than an old-fashioned hammering handed out by their own team to a minor side.

Of course, part of the reason for the continued disparity – usually noticed only at the World Cup every four years – is that the small teams never play the big ones. The lack of exposure to regular heavy-duty opposition means that improvement can come but slowly, if at all.

Bangladesh became a full member of the ICC in 2000, partly on the back of an infamous victory against Pakistan in the 1999 World Cup, which was later found to be rigged. They were patently not ready for the elevation, but did that really matter so much?

Sixteen years on there are definite stirrings that Bangladesh are now fit to keep the most exalted company, as they showed by their qualification this week for the final of the Asia Cup – effectively another warm-up for the World Twenty20 – ahead of Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The additional strength of T20 is that the gap is narrowed by the shortness of the format. Fans are more likely to warm to it because of the possibility of seeing closer matches.

One of the co-authors of the Sheffield-Nottingham study, Dr Abhinav Sacheti, said the research could have long-term implications for the ICC, possibly leaving ODIs in a no-man’s land between Tests and T20s. “Ultimately, everything points towards the importance of investing in developing cricket in the ICC’s less familiar associate and affiliate member nations,” he said.

The reluctance to do so reached its apotheosis when India, England and Australia staged their ICC power grab in 2014. Although there were many reasons for England going along with it, not least, besides self-interest, the need to hang on to India’s coat-tails, it was designed not necessarily to keep smaller cricketing nations poor but to keep them small and perpetually in obeisance to the Big Three.

Many, if not all, of those disastrous and inequitable changes are about to be repealed, due to another power grab within India, but the idea of more countries competing properly against each other is still a generation away. Ireland, perhaps Scotland too, will continue the struggle to hang on to their best players.

Yet again in this World Twenty20, the Irish will have to put up with the sight of the best batsman to be born and bred in Ireland, Eoin Morgan, playing for England. From an early age, as soon as his talent was evident, Morgan was destined to leave Ireland for England. It was the only way he could be genuinely fulfilled as a cricketer. He knew it, and accepted it.

If Morgan or someone as gifted were to emerge now, it might be different. Or it might not. Cricket in Ireland might not yet be part of the fabric of the nation but its progress has been as dramatic in its way as that of Afghanistan. For the next Morgan, however, England would still hold obvious attractions for personal and team attainment.

Plans have been mooted recently for a two-tier Test structure, which would at least give countries like Ireland renewed optimism that their development has not been for nought, but it may be advisable not to hold breath.

In essence, as next week’s pre-tournament tournament shows, there are already two tiers in Twenty20, and from now on the competition will take place only every four years. The 50-over World Cup has been reduced to 10 teams.

There are the makings of a delightful event in India. The ability of the top players has never been higher, at least in the shortest form of cricket, but globalisation continues to be an unwieldy word in the ICC lexicon, not a realistic aspiration.