Cricket: Ireland join the Test club

“Truly historic sporting occasions don’t come around too often,” said Emmet Riordan in The Irish Times. But we saw one in Dublin last week, when Ireland played its first Test – becoming only the 11th nation in 141 years to compete in the format. All but one country have lost their inaugural Test, and the Irish did not buck the trend: Pakistan defeated them by five wickets. But this was a “respectable” performance nonetheless, said Gerard Hughes in The Irish Independent. The Irish gave Pakistan “a mighty scare”, succumbing with just a couple of hours to go. And the match was lifted by Kevin O’brien, who scored 118 to become Ireland’s first Test centurion.

Cricket has a long history in Ireland, said Tim Wigmore in The Daily Telegraph. It was played as early as the 18th century; by 1860, it was one of the most popular sports in the country. But in 1901, the Gaelic Athletic Association banned it, on the grounds that it was a non-gaelic sport. The ban stood for 70 years, and even after it was lifted, cricketers treated the game “like a secret society”: as a teenager, O’brien never told his schoolmates that he played. But a series of impressive victories in the World Cup – Ireland have beaten five Test nations in the last three tournaments, a better record than England – “catapulted Irish cricket onto the front pages and inspired a new generation”. Last year, finally, the International Cricket Council (ICC) granted the country Test status. As a result, Ireland will receive more funding from the ICC, said Andy Bull in The Guardian. It will need it, because Test cricket is terribly expensive: matches tend to be “loss leaders”, because it’s hard to draw in crowds for three- or five-test series. That’s a sign of the format’s flagging health: even in Ireland, where Test cricket was “only just born”, there is “a whiff of something terminal about it”.