Four-day Test with Ireland on the cards

ENGLAND are in negotiations to play Ireland in a Lord’s Test match next summer after Australia cooled on a proposed fixture against the Irish.

An ECB spokesman confirmed that talks between the boards are at an advanced stage for what could be a four-day Test at the home of cricket.

Although the England hierarchy retain a preference for five-day Tests, one of the issues to get around is the narrow time frame that exists between the end of the World Cup on July 14 and the start of the Ashes.

While the venues for those five England v Australia matches have been set, the dates have not and the window will be no bigger than 10-12 days — a period which is also set to feature a pre-series camp for Joe Root’s team.

Scheduling issues led to a polite ‘no’ to an Ireland Test match invitation by Cricket Australia, who will instead send their team into a single warm-up match against an English county.

But Cricket Ireland, in their Test infancy, retain a strong bargaining position in their quest for a lucrative fixture, as they can offer competitive match practice for England’s multi-format players.

The timing of the World Cup in the schedule means that, in all likelihood, the likes of Root, Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow will not have participated in a red-ball contest for five months. It was previously thought that Ireland’s first Test meeting against England would not be until 2021.