BIG-TIME IRISH OFF TO A FLIER
But Pakistan blunt Test debut
IT was worth the wait. The sun shone, the beer flowed and Ireland’s men — on their delayed first day of Test cricket — went toe to toe with Pakistan. With a bit more spit and polish, they might have done even better.
If Friday’s washout was the definitive anti-climax, this was Test cricket as the Irish had imagined it.
Malahide was humming, and only when sections of a 5,000-strong crowd drifted off after tea to find a TV to watch coverage of Leinster in rugby’s European Champions Cup final in Bilbao did the atmosphere wane.
By then, Pakistan had fought back to reach 268 for six. With power to add, and on a pitch of surprisingly decent carry, their total could prove match-winning.
Yet Ireland know they might easily have finished day two in the ascendancy. No side other than Australia, way back in 1877, have won their inaugural Test — and the Irish had several moments when they appeared poised at history’s crossroads.
The first came as they made good use of William Porterfield’s decision to bowl. More than four years after taking his only previous Test wicket, for England against Australia at Sydney, the giant Boyd Rankin had Azhar Ali caught at second slip.
And when Tim Murtagh, Middlesex’s 36- year- old Lambeth- born seamer, trapped Imam-ul-Haq next ball, Pakistan were 13 for two.
Had Stuart Thompson hit the nonstriker’s stumps, with Haris Sohail out of his ground, it would have been three in three balls.
Honestly, you wait decades for Ireland’s first Test wicket, then nearly get three at once…
Instead, Sohail got to 31 before squirting Thompson low to Porterfield at gully shortly after lunch.
But it gradually became apparent that Ireland would be over-reliant on Murtagh and Rankin, who bounced out Asad Shafiq for 62 following a sustained barrage from round the wicket.
And there was a collective groan when — with the score on 237 — debutant Faheem Ashraf edged Rankin high to the left of wicketkeeper Niall O’Brien, who missed the chance.
In this pretty coastal town, it was an early lesson in Test cricket’s ebb and flow.
‘It is a bit of a disappointment,’ said Murtagh later. ‘We got the ball swinging for the majority of the day, and it’s a shame that partnership at the end has taken it a little bit away from us.
‘And 13 for three would have been a dream start. We spilled a couple of chances towards the end, and if we’d taken those, 250 for eight would look pretty different.’
When bad light stopped play 22 overs early, both Ashraf and teenager Shadab Khan had brought up their first Test fifties, their seventh-wicket stand so far worth 109. They felt like decisive runs.
Despite that — and their team’s recent failure to qualify for next year’s 50-over World Cup — these are heady times for Irish cricket. There are plans for a new Test venue at Dublin’s National Sports Campus, and even ambitious talk of equipping it with giant mesh netting to deal with the perennial problem of rain.
Ireland hope to appear in a Lord’s Test in 2021, and before that may be tempted to become the first side to play a Test in Pakistan since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team and match officials in Lahore nine years ago.
First, though, there is a game to be won, and history to be made. As baby steps go, it would be a giant one.