Dig in

Dave Sihra (Dave Meets Ball - Substack)

On Day Four at Mirpur, Ireland scrapped again to bring proceedings to the final day and push Bangladesh for one last time and possibly see what they can get out of this series.

There’s not much you can do from this position in a test match. The scorecard has largely become irrelevant. Bangladesh will most certainly win baring a freak weather event.

At this point, all Ireland can do is scrap. Dig in. And that is certainly what they have done one last time in this series to finish out the evening session on 176-6.
Forgetting the scoreboard was the name of the game when Lorcan Tucker, Stephen Doheny and Jordan Neill batted so well in the first dig. Build partnerships, time passes, the bowlers start to wonder and the fielders begin to drift.

Today Harry Tector made it to an important fifty off 78 balls moving through the gears during the innings. However he then fell just two deliveries later skipping down the track and chipping Murad to Mushfiqur waiting at mid off.

Tucker arrived at the crease and confidently got off the mark immediately - almost looking like he was picking up from where he left off on Day Three. He just really loves Mirpur.

There was a nick behind off Khaled Ahmed which didn’t carry and thankfully the Pembroke man stood his ground to let the umpires do the rest. However two overs later a very similar nick traveled the full distance off the same bowler safe into the gloves.

Curtis Campher smartly batted his way to Stumps with 34 off 93, crucially making it through what has been the hardest time to bat for Ireland. Andy McBrine has also settled in with 11 off 13.
On Day Five, the remaining visiting batters have the opportunity to keep pushing Bangladesh and make them wonder how long they need to keep at this.

Ireland again had to scrap with the ball in the first half of Day Four, but it’s got to be stressed that you are doing so with absolutely no pressure as the opposition are well ahead which allowed Bangladesh to travel at 4.3 per over.

Gavin Hoey earlier got to add a second wicket in the innings to finish with four in the match - a decent start for the debutant leg-spinner. Jordan Neill playing in his second game also finally got his first test wicket off a lovely rising delivery to Shanto which goes with his four List A wickets and two T20 wickets. Very much a project in the works.

Pete Johnston, head coach with Emerging Ireland and Ireland Under-19s Men often speaks about learning from the hard times. In the past he has mentioned this about the Emerging Ireland tour to the West Indies in 2023 when Cade Carmichael, Matthew Humphreys, Gavin Hoey and Liam McCarthy all made their first-class debuts.

It proved a difficult trip on the red ball leg of the tour with the pathway side losing to West Indies Academy by an innings and 134 runs in the first four-day game and then by 432 runs in the second. They also lost the List A series 2-1.

There was then a marked improvement in the 2024 return tour by West Indies Academy. Emerging Ireland took the List A series 3-0 and the first-class series 2-0 (admittedly with Balbirnie, Stirling and McBrine assisting in the second four-day game as their own prep for the Stormont Zimbabwe test).

There’s obviously a lot to take from a challenging test series like this. Matthew Humphreys has bowled 108 overs in these conditions at an overall economy of 3.47. It’s the most from a bowler on either team and that rhythm may well stand him well in the upcoming T20I series and going further this winter.

It’s perhaps still too early to go through all of the learnings from these test matches, but for now all Ireland can do is dig in to get everything they can from this series.

This article was originally published on Dave Sihra’s Substack: Dave Meets Ball