Wilson defies the pain to save Ireland from humiliation
William Porterfield’s off stump lay uprooted on the floor, wrecked by a ball from Mohammad Amir that swung too much, too late and too quickly. Half an hour into Ireland’s maiden Test innings, their captain trudged off with his country at five for three.
Shortly after the players returned from lunch, Niall O’brien was pinned on the knee by an in-ducker from Mohammad Abbas. Not yet 50 balls in, Ireland were seven for four. To be at Malahide, on a day in which 109 ex-irish internationals came to celebrate their huge achievement in gaining Test status, felt like intruding upon private grief.
Ed Joyce had extended his outstanding career into his 40th year to earn a Test cap. He deserved better than for his first innings to be truncated after four balls by a legbefore decision when the ball pitched outside leg stump.
The financial inequities in world cricket are such that Cricket Ireland could not afford the £35,000 that the Decision Review System would have cost.
And yet this was also a day that showed what Test cricket means. After Amir, Abbas and Shadab Khan had pushed Ireland into the desolation of 61 for seven – a score that prompted fears the Test would finish later in the day, and frenetic googling of the lowest score by a Test nation on debut (84, by South Africa in 1889) – Gary Wilson walked out to bat.
His day began when a ball smashed him on the elbow in the nets. Rather than take the field, as Tim Murtagh bowled well with the second new ball before Pakistan declared half an hour before lunch, Wilson went to hospital for scans. He prepared for his first Test innings by taking painkillers. “It had to be done,” he said.
When he entered at No9, Wilson was in the most pain he has ever known on a cricket field. He thought he might only be able to block, but worked out he could use the pace of the ball to sweep, reverse-sweep and deflect. His stoicism and skill hauled Ireland up from the ignominy of failing to reach triple figures in their maiden Test innings.
The standing ovation from many fans when Boyd Rankin edged a ball through the slips to bring up the team’s 100 betrayed how harrowing Ireland’s experience had been. If it could have been so much worse, 130 was still no sort of score.
Pakistan opted to enforce the follow-on, the thought of what state Ireland’s second innings would be by the day’s end was a chastening one – especially in the split seconds between Joyce edging the third ball behind and the chance being shelled. Porterfield also edged Amir behind, but he was reprieved.
Joyce, though, unfurled a couple of his picturesque drives. Ireland had their first half-century stand in Tests to cheer. He and Porterfield walked off just about able to glimpse the promise that Test cricket will not always be this brutal.