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The Irish Problem

July 2009

Ireland feel they have nowhere to go, they can’t play Tests, they struggle to host one-dayers and England are stealing their players. Richard Gillis investigates

Eoin Morgan’s selection for the England Twenty20 and one-day international squad was greeted with a resigned shrug by Ireland’s cricket authorities, who sent the Dublin-born batsman off with their best wishes for a long and lucrative international career. No point in fighting the inevitable after all. “We’ve known for a long time that Eoin was destined to play for England, and the squad is happy for him that he’s got there and realised his ambition,” says Phil Simmons, Ireland’s coach.

But as he prepares to swap the Shamrock for the Three Lions, the story behind Morgan’s decision reveals much about the realpolitik of international cricket and the cynicism of the counties, while prompting Ireland’s leading cricket executive to question the value of the ICC’s £200million global strategy.

Rewind to April 2007, when England played Ireland in the Super Eight stage of the World Cup, following the sensational Irish victory over Pakistan on St Patrick’s Day in Jamaica the week before. Opening the England innings was another talented Middlesex left-hander who, like Morgan, was brought up in the competitive Dublin club leagues. Ed Joyce’s runs had ensured Irish qualification for the World Cup: at the 2005 ICC Trophy he scored 399 runs at an average of 99.75. But the match in Guyana was a personal disaster – he was dismissed, shouldering arms to Boyd Rankin for one and dropped three catches. The match signalled the end, for now at least, of Joyce’s international career and his role in England’s lacklustre World Cup campaign contrasted starkly to Ireland’s heroics, which elevated them to ninth in the ODI rankings.

Financially, the World Cup revealed the distance between the top Associate nations and the Test-playing group. For winning through to the Super Eights, Ireland won £36,000 in prize money, a figure that pales when set next to the £7million participation fee received by Zimbabwe’s cricket authorities, whose team Ireland had left behind in Jamaica.

However, the World Cup put Ireland in the global spotlight and, back in Dublin, Irish Cricket Union chief executive Warren Deutrom set about capitalising on this new-found status. Deutrom is a former ICC and ECB executive, attuned to the inner workings of the cricket economy with a contact book to match. He noted a clause in India’s domestic television deal that stipulated 25 matches should be held ‘out of market’, and saw a role for Ireland in hosting potentially lucrative India ODIs in the northern hemisphere. Discussions with Lalit Modi, the Indian board vice president, led to the setting up of the Future Series, a three-game ODI rubber between India and South Africa, with two friendlies against the hosts Ireland.

These games took place in June 2007 at Stormont Castle in Belfast but were blighted by poor weather and empty stands; the most memorable moment came when Sachin Tendulkar, wearing four sweaters, was clean bowled by 26-year-old Roger Whelan, who then retired to sing lead vocals with The Stimulants, a thrash-metal band from Dublin.

But in London the Future Series was being viewed with something approaching horror by ECB chief executive David Collier. By hosting international cricket on a regular basis Ireland’s growing commercial ambitions would potentially clash with England’s northern hemisphere monopoly, and reduce the value of the ECB’s television rights, for which Sky had paid £220million in 2005.

Collier’s initial response was to threaten the ICU with expulsion from the Friends Provident Trophy. The issue was ultimately resolved with a pay-off: the ICU would stop hosting India in return for England visiting for a potential sell-out ODI every other year. In addition, the ECB paid a six-figure sum to take ownership of Ireland’s television rights. There is a double standard here, not lost on cricket followers in Ireland: when the ECB offered to host IPL matches earlier this year, Collier was attempting to do exactly what he stopped Ireland doing.

Meanwhile, Eoin Morgan was another for whom the Future Series was a watershed moment. He had entered the 2007 ICC World Cup to much media fanfare but like Joyce endured a torrid time, averaging 10.11 for the tournament. And in May 2007, Morgan decided to play for his county rather than country against South Africa and India, despite the ICC’s ruling that stipulates county players be released for international games. Sensitive to how this would go down at home, Morgan took the unusual step of issuing a statement to explain his decision: “If I had gone away and played for Ireland,” he said, “Middlesex indicated that if my replacement scored runs, then they would be above me in the fight for places. They weren’t in a position to give me any guarantee about my place.”

By agreeing to release Morgan, Middlesex had complied with the letter of the ICC rules but they then shifted the responsibility for the decision on to a 20-year-old.

For Deutrom, the loss of his best player, then as now, merely reflects the wider issue. He poses a question that strikes at the heart of the ICC’s global strategy.

“What is the point of Associate cricket?” he says, laying down a challenge to Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, and his former employers in Dubai. “Ireland has proved itself head and shoulders above the rest of the Associate nations, winning all the available titles in every form of the game – four-day, 50-over and Twenty20. Yet we are bumping up against a glass ceiling. What does the ICC want us to do? How do we get from high-performance programme to the higher echelons of the world game? There is no road map for us. The issue brings to question the whole mission statement of the ICC High Performance Programme: what is it preparing teams for?

“The Future Tours Programme for 2012 onwards is currently under discussion,” he says. “There is little discussion about accommodating any more Full Members. So three or four years from now there will be no new entrants into the cosy club of full Test members. That is a significant frustration. It shows that despite the massive investment in the Associate programme, costing over £200million over seven years, there is no stepping stone from No.1 of the Associate countries, (out of 94 countries) into the Test world.

“What is the point,” he says, “of the Intercontinental Cup?” This is the ICC’s four-day, eight-team, round-robin competition which, according to the ICC, “aims to eventually establish a ranking for Associate Members in the longer form of the game to complement current rankings from the World Cricket League one-day tournaments. This will provide a more complete indication of the cricket development of the top Associate countries”.

However, to Deutrom, the costs outweigh the benefits: “There is no prize money, no competitive incentive at the end of it, such as the chance to play a Test match or a multi-day match against a Full Member. We win a tin cup but nothing else.”

The cost of participation in the event is considerable he says, running to nearly £87,000, for which the ICU gets financial assistance from the ICC in terms of flights and accommodation for a set number of players to participate. “We have won it three years on the trot and it costs an extraordinary amount of money. But in terms of financial priority, it is difficult to argue that four-day cricket is high up there with qualifying for 50-over and 20-over World Cups by paying to host ODIs. If we thought it was leading somewhere I’m sure we would want to invest in it further.”

“Inclusion in the Future Tours Programme,” he says, “gives guaranteed fixtures, which allows the ICU board to put together a commercial package with some certainty. This makes it interesting for broadcasters, and then sponsors, ticketing and hospitality. Currently, we don’t know what next year’s fixtures are going to be. We are not saying that Ireland deserves to be a Test nation tomorrow but what steps do we need to take to get there?”

An ICC spokesman told TWC: “The pathway that Warren Deutrom refers to is currently under consideration. Any decision to increase the number of Full Members would ultimately be a matter for the ICC Board, which is made up of representatives of each of the Full Member boards around the world and three Associate representatives.” It’s worth noting that Zimbabwe won the ICC Trophy three times in a row (1982, 1986 and 1990) and dominated Associate cricket for 10 years before it was made a Full Member in 1992.

Dublin bookmakers don’t seem to rate Ireland’s chances of joining them, and have noted the Chinese cricket authorities target to gain Test status by 2020. What price China playing Tests before Ireland? That’s a bet Eoin Morgan just took.