Rankin and Murtagh produce flying start

At 10.10 on a sun-kissed morning at Malahide, Ireland’s cricketers stood in a huddle on the outfield as Andrew White, chairman of selectors, presented them with their Test caps.

Some concealed tears as they congratulated each other, celebrating not only their own achievements but all those who had worked towards this impossible dream.

A few seconds later a coach interjected. “Let’s get moving,” he said, telling the players to finish warming-up. After the emotion, back to work.

And work Ireland did. At 11am, just after a rendition of Ireland’s Call, Tim Murtagh became the 11th man to deliver a nation’s first ball in Test cricket.

Murtagh has 712 first-class wickets, and a style suited to exploiting the moisture in the wicket, a result of the rain that had delayed Ireland’s Test debut by 24 hours. To hums of expectation – and, perhaps, a little trepidation – he delivered the first ball.

Nothing could prepare him for the moment. “I just missed my length by about eight yards,” Murtagh laughed after play. “It was a bit of a letdown.”

In the ensuing melee, as Pakistan scrambled a single, Imam-ul-Haq fell to the floor after a collision, necessitating an eight-minute wait. But what was that set against the 51,557 days that Ireland had waited for Test status?

Roars accompanied the next historymaking moment, when Azhar Ali fended Boyd Rankin to William Porterfield at slip. It was Ireland’s first Test wicket. The very next ball, Murtagh speared a ball back into Imam’s front pad and had a maiden Test wicket of his own. Pakistan were 13-2. Easy, this Test cricket lark! Even as the new ball lost its shine, Ireland threatened with a length designed to invite injudicious drives, alongside strike bowler Rankin attacking with his short ball.

When Sarfraz Ahmed slashed Stuart Thompson’s seam to second slip, Pakistan were 159 for six.

Any illusions about the step-up that Test cricket represents were shattered by an unbroken seventh-wicket stand of 109 by Shadab Khan and Faheem Ashraf that showed Pakistan possessed better batting depth than Ireland did bowling depth.

There was a dropped catch from Niall O’Brien off Faheem, and a reminder that Test cricket exacerbates excruciatingly small margins.

Ireland, of course, knew as much before this day. Now, 11 of their players have had the joy of experiencing as much themselves.