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A common joke in cricket is that if one performs well for Ireland, then one gets selected to represent England. It’s funny but also highlights the sad realities of what it is to be an associate team. Ireland in the 2007 World Cup captured everyone’s hearts and were instantly loved and adored by fans all over the world. It was the story of the underdog: players playing for passion and competing against the best in the world. However, 6 years since then, Ireland haven’t made much inroads into the world of cricket other than turning up at the World T20s and upsetting a good team every now and then.
Ireland, despite being an associate team, do have some world class players in their ranks: say someone like William Porterfield. Unfortunately, most of them ship overseas as Eoin Morgan and Boyd Rankin have shown us. Ger Siggins in his Cricinfo article writes,
“The president of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, came to watch this ODI at Malahide but even a veteran politician would have been shocked at the ingratitude of two of the nation’s sons. Eoin Morgan and Boyd Rankin both came up through the Irish ranks as fresh-faced schoolboys, their talent brought out and nurtured by largely volunteer coaches and mentors. They left it as steely eyed professionals, changing allegiances to further their careers. Few in Ireland actually begrudge them doing this, recognizing the flawed system that forces them to do so and damning instead the game’s administrators who fail to prevent it.”
The Irish have long been immigrants in other countries plying their trade and their genius in foreign lands for a better livelihood and more opportunities; in the process, Ireland have lost many of her sons and daughters. And now in the Irish cricket scene, we see the same. Can one blame Morgan or Rankin for moving over to England? It was a personal career decision, and the two made the choice that was more beneficial in almost all terms: from financial aspects to growth opportunities. But in that process Ireland’s cricket has become poorer.
So what does Ireland have to do to keep her talents rather than export them? There’s not much Ireland can do other than create a more professional environment that makes the players stay or at least tempts them to. Ireland’s captain William Poterfield, speaking of Irish cricket, said,
“It’s a credit to Irish cricket that we can produce players like Eoin and Boyd. We have an Irish cricket culture now and it’s growing by the day. There were nearly 10,000 through the gates today and I hope the youngsters will be inspired by them.”
And that is the key to Ireland: the youngsters. The next generation of cricketers who would benefit from the cricket culture that is being developed now. That’s the future for Ireland, and the administration must invest in them. And absolutely make sure that the dividend of all that investment is not stolen by England. Ireland can’t be a talent manufacturing unit for English cricket. Irish cricket must benefit from it.
The Irish are proud nationalistic people, and W.B. Yeats, one such poet, wrote ballads about the island and her people. The hope now is that one day Irish cricket would have ballads written about it.
