Ireland vs Australia, Dublin: Australia overcome spirited Irish

Ireland played out of their skins to give a tough fight to Australia in their on-off one-day international at Dublin yesterday. After restricting them for a below-par 239, Irish openers came hard at the Aussies to be favourites at 80 without loss in the 11th over. However, their inexperience gave way to a 39-run win for Australia who were saved embarrassment thanks to a five wicket haul by James Hopes.

Earlier, Australia got off to a slow start as Watson departed in the fifth over itself. Wickets fell at regular intervals thereon but it was their replacement wicketkeeper Tim Paine who roughed it out in the middle for a hard-working innings of 81 to stabilise Australian innings and give some respectability to their total. His stand with Ponting and Cameron White, both of 66 runs was important as other partnerships were hardly productive. Kevin O Brien took three wickets and Stirling was impressive in his ten overs, who conceded just 34 runs.

Stirling and Captain William Porterfield produced a sterling opening partnership of 80 runs to give Aussies a real scare. They lost three quick wickets but then a fourth wicket partnership between Cusack and Niall O Brien of 51 runs looked to repair the damage before Hopes demolished their lower order, taking 5 wickets for 14 runs. At 156 for 9, John Mooney entertained the crowd and added 36 runs with Boyd Rankin.

Skipper Porterfield was downright upset about Ireland having thrown away its advantage.

Shane Watson departing: The Irish were on top for the most part on Thursday

“When these occasions come around we have to show what we can do,” he said as reported by Cricinfo. “The first 70 overs of that game we were almost on top in everything we did. We were ahead of the game. It’s obviously disappointing to lose, but we showed what we can do in stages there.

“Instead of 70 overs we’ve got to do that for 100. There’s no letting up and you can’t afford to lose wickets in bunches against teams like this. They’ll come down on you as they did. It’s disappointing, we shouldn’t collapse like that.”

Hopes received the man of the match award for his 5-wicket haul. The Queenslander conceded that they were rusty against Ireland. The game was perceived to be a warm-up before the ODI series against England starting 22nd of this month at Southampton, yet it was anything but a warm-up.

“When we turned up today we knew there was a good chance that Ireland were going to come out and give us a good run,” he said. “We hadn’t played any one-day cricket for a while, since New Zealand, and we got off to a sluggish start.

“They got off to a blistering start and they were in a position to put us away, and we were fortunate to get out. Fortunately we brought it back in the middle overs and you could look at it that we got out of jail.”

Ireland is knocking on the doors of the ICC for its full member status. They have shown time and again that they can compete with the best, with positive views in some quarters about their worthiness for a Test status. A full member status would improve cricketing infrastructure in Ireland significantly, meaning good players would not cross boundaries to play for a neighbouring nation or have to worry about balancing cricket with other priorities in normal life there.

The question is when?