Spirit of the Irish

If the International Cricket Council needed a rebuttal to their decision to trim number of participants in the 2019 World Cup from 14 to 10, then they have already had one yesterday in the form of a whopping defeat of former champions West Indies at the hands of associate member Ireland.

The Irish captain William Porterfield, on the eve of the tournament, had expressed his annoyance at being repeatedly labelled as 'minnows' by some television commentators. When one analyses Ireland's records in the three World Cups they have so far taken part there is every reason to empathise with the Irish skipper's feelings.

With five wins and a tie in their 19 World Cup matches so far, and four of those wins against Test playing nations -- Pakistan, Bangladesh, England and lastly West Indies -- the men in green remain the most consistent amongst the associate members.

Such consistent performance at the biggest stage of cricket is one more reason to refute ICC's apathy towards Ireland's demand for Test status. The ICC may argue that neither the infrastructure nor the popularity of the game in Ireland is helping their cause. But there is always this counter-argument that awarding the Test status would go some way to solving these two obstacles. On pure cricketing merit, there should hardly be any qualms about the Irish as all of these players ply their trade in English county cricket and have proved their mettle in different conditions around the world, more so than some of their more privileged brothers.

When one considers the fact that Ireland have only got 91 matches since gaining one-day status nine years ago, the ambiguous nature of the ICC's efforts to integrate more deserving teams into the top-tier becomes evident. So yesterday's 'upset', as some people would like to label it, couldn't have come as a more emphatic and timely response to the ICC.

Another emphatic statistic to emerge out of this victory is that Ireland are the only team to have successfully chased down 300-plus scores in World Cup on more than one occasion. In fact they have now done so on three different occasions, with Sri Lanka and England having achieved that once each. 

So when Porterfield chose to field against West Indies after winning the toss in Nelson yesterday, despite the fact that all the four previous matches in this World Cup have been won by the team batting first, he was taking a gamble, but the gamble was backed by calculation and confidence.

Still the players had to execute their plans on the field, and they did so quite clinically and efficiently. The bowlers bowled within their obvious limitations and were backed brilliantly by some hardworking fielding effort. The batsmen had the confidence of chasing down a big total and they looked effortless in doing so, paving way for yet another Irish triumph.

It's a kind of performance that may not have any bearing as far as the title race is concerned, but will certainly add tremendous value to an otherwise endless and tiresome group stage of the World Cup. Let's hope ICC doesn't spoil the fun.