Loss to Ireland underlines weakness of England’s World Cup hopes

Straight off the back of playing in the match of the tournament so far, managing to tie with hosts India on Sunday, England on Wednesday contrived to produce the shock result of the cricket World Cup, losing to 400/1 outsiders Ireland in Bangalore.

Part of the problem with the cricket World Cup is the gulf in class between the established Test playing nations, such as Australia, Pakistan and West Indies, and the minnows in the tourney, the “Associate Members,” such as Kenya, Canada and Netherlands.

In the recent past, Associate Members Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh have used the World Cup as a stepping stone towards full Test status, and Sri Lanka have even managed to win the World Cup since. But from 2015, Associate members are to be frozen out of sitting at the World Cup table with the big boys.

By the performances against England already, Netherlands and Ireland may be getting very close to first-class status. Though England’s ineptitude has helped both the Dutch and Irish over-achieve.

I’ve no idea if Kevin O’Brien is religious or not, but watching him at work against England was enough to make a man believe in miracles. Perhaps he said a little prayer before he walked out to bat, perhaps to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.

Ireland were 106 for four when O’Brien walked out to the wicket and there were just 166 balls left to score the 222 runs they needed to complete the largest successful run chase in the history of the World Cup.

Graeme Swann was tying the team in tangles, in the thick of a spell that took three wickets for six runs in 14 balls. Did O’Brien think Ireland could win the game?

No. His explanation for one of the most startlingly violent innings in the history of cricket was deliciously simple:

“I just back my own ability. If the ball’s there to hit, I try to hit it as hard as I can.”

He struck six sixes, one of them the longest that has been struck in this tournament yet, landing 114 yards away in the concrete terraces.

It would be wrong to put O’Brien and his team’s victory all down to the luck of the Irish. O’Brien took a calculated risk by starting the batting powerplay in the 31st over, though admittedly he did not have much to lose. The haymakers he threw in those five overs brought him three sixes and six fours. When the assault was over, England were punch-drunk.

But O’Brien did not get carried away. He looked up at the scoreboard and see that his team needed 80 from 72 balls. They could get the target in singles and twos, just picking the bad balls to dispatch to the boundary with the England fielders seemingly scattered to the four corners of India.

From then on he only hit one more four. Otherwise he contented himself with ones and twos.

This was not a fluke. Ireland played some of the best cricket this competition has seen, or is likely to see. They knew exactly what they were doing. Alex Cusack hit any bad balls to the ropes and otherwise just made sure O’Brien had as much of the strike as possible. When he fell, John Mooney took up the attack while O’Brien throttled back, playing it safe as the settled batsman.

For a man who spent last season playing club cricket for Railway Union in the Leinster Premier League, this could be a life-changing innings for O’Brien. He has just made a hell of an impression on a whole host of talent scouts from the multi-million dollar Indian Premier League.

It is surely going to be a lot harder to kick the Associates nations out of the World Cup after this. Ireland’s victory put one over on the entire International Cricket Council, never mind England.

And what of England? Andrew Strauss and his side could not handle it when O’Brien turned up the heat. They may yet make the quarterfinals but not without changing the team. Even the top-order, the one part of the side which has shined in the three matches so far, failed to kill off the game by getting the extra 20 or 30 runs that they might have done before giving away soft wickets.

Strauss made plenty of noise in his post-match press conference about the flat pitches they have been playing on but as O’Brien said: “I just knew that if I could stay there and I got a few boundaries away, we could get on top of the English bowlers as teams in this tournament have done. They didn’t really know what they were up to with their bowling plans and we took advantage.”

Under pressure, England’s bowling has been described as “clueless,” their fielding “appalling”.

The curious part of it is that these are the very same aspects of their game that served them so well in the Ashes. In the last four days, England have played their part in two of the greatest matches in the history of this competition. That, though, will be small consolation.

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