Posted by An historic day. Not many teams get the better of Ireland in Test cricket. New Zealand today inflicted only their second ever defeat in home conditions and their first by an innings. Extraordinary stuff.
Even more amazingly, New Zealand had never before got the better of Ireland, home or away. Throw in the fact Ireland’s only previous home defeat was to Pakistan, way back in 2018, and you’d have got long odds on this result before the schedule was agreed and the fixture was inked-in (whenever that was).
Not many teams come to Ireland and win a Test match. England have never done it, for example – although they have at least notched that difficult first Test victory over them, thanks to Jack Leach’s second-silliest innings.
There’s hope there and in New Zealand’s success for the likes of poor enfeebled India, Australia, South Africa and the West Indies, who are all yet to get off the mark against the mighty Irish.
Ireland now and then and maybe again
When England first played Ireland in a Test match four years ago, we had visions of it becoming an annual fixture with a slowly developing history. We’ve followed England cricket long enough to know there was pretty much zero chance that would happen, but the prospect only seemed more remote during the second Test match between the two nations.
I read the following summary blurb passage in the above article three times, before realising why it made no sense to me – the first use of the word “innings” is an error:
“Not many teams get the better of Ireland in Test cricket. New Zealand today inflicted only their second ever innings defeat in home conditions and their first by an innings.”
This comment will make even less sense than that once KC fixes the problem in the summary blurb.
What is apparent is that the way to inflict a test match defeat upon Ireland, in Ireland, is to make Ireland follow on. 100% of Ireland’s home defeats (both of them) have involved Ireland following on.
Thus, apparently there are two things that Ireland can do to avoid home defeat in test matches:
* bat first;
* not play test matches in Ireland.
Of course, it would be great to see Ireland play more test matches, including more test matches in Ireland.
Bat first it is then.
Thanks for pointing that out. A classic case of a sentence rewritten so many times that we lost the ability to read it.