Revisiting the Stormont India 2-0 dream

It was a madcap three days for Irish cricket but what actually happened off the Newtownards Road last Friday and Sunday.

Was it maybe a strange day for the 11th-ranked T20 men’s side in the world to beat the three-time world champions (and number one-ranked side) two zip?

(Now former) England Test captain Ben Stokes dropped an atomic bomb on English cricket when he announced his international retirement mid-test match on that very Sunday just before 3pm and then took a wicket as the news spread all across Trent Bridge and soon the world.

Ireland captain Lorcan Tucker said as much: “Sometimes it feels like we play in the shadows of international cricket, but I think we will be front page news after this... it’s absolutely amazing”. Well it’s hard not to make the front or back pages, when you beat a team that hasn’t lost a T20I series since 2023.

Across the two games you had performances that grabbed players from out of the shadows and thrust them onto the stage in front of searing footlights. Jai Moondra, who is he? Matthew Hollard, where have you been? With the way cricket media works, you can just become known for one wicket, one match, innings or performance. Moondra may go on to achieve much more but chances are he’ll be known as the guy who took a wicket first ball on debut against a 2026 IPL all-star team then did it again a day later. Sorry Sanju Samson.

A quick word on Lorcan Tucker’s first series as captain. On Sunday he makes the calculated gamble to use up his main bowlers. Lorcan couldn’t quite fit in Gareth Delany so gets Harry Tector playing his 100th T20I to bowl the last over with 20 needed with his part-time off-spinners. These are big bold calls. But, hell, they worked. Death bowling plans - did Ireland have any with this makeshift attack? They weren’t quite needed on Friday and Tucker managed to expertly use what he had available in the next game too.

Now how did Matthew Humphreys, who needed several stitches on his bowling hand, convince the Ireland management to let him play in Game Two? It was a bad looking bang from an Axar Patel shot on Friday that saw Humphreys struggle with his left-arm off-spin stock ball on Sunday with length and pace now not quite coming out right. By the end, the Instonian was just delivering arm-balls. In white ball cricket he does that a lot anyway, but this was now effectively very canny left-arm medium. The bluff from Humphreys would have made Shane Warne smile. Just make them think it’s spinning.

Now what if we played every Ireland match in Stormont. Every single one. The ground dimensions, the nature of the pitch, the bowling plans all made life very difficult for a batting line-up fresh from the IPL that didn’t quite know how to counter those three particular elements. There were no impact substitutes here either. Okay, maybe not 100% of Ireland games at Stormont. But playing more home internationals would certainly make things interesting for our overall record as visiting sides try to come to terms with winds, temperatures and pitches because it worked against some very talented T20 batters just there. Can you really do it on a cold, windy day at Malahide/Clontarf/Bready/Stormont?

Ireland were of course going into this series with injuries to six regular players. We have had two debutants put in very impressive performances. So where does this leave the Inter-Pro system? It’s a very legitimate question. There of course has been a feeling that the IP competitions won’t tell you enough about whether a player is ready for international duty. The response to this had been to reduce the amount of teams involved to increase standards, but also pay more attention to your best-v-best competition: the Emerald Challenge.

So what do two games in Stormont tell us about the Inter-Pros? Well there might be more that meets the eye. The IP20 and IP50 are competitions in an awkward position. They haven’t been quite trusted to directly produce internationals. As marketable products, they don’t grab attention in the same way as some of the club competitions on the island. But last year in the IP50, Jai Moondra was the leading wicket-taker with 11 at 21.45. Matt Hollard had the best bowling figures with 5-62 and took his at an average of 15.57. A bit of life to the Inter-Pros yet?

If you watched Moondra last year you didn’t see a bowler delivering spells at 87/88 miles per hour. But did he look capable of it? Out of his 11 wickets he was getting out Ireland players including Paul Stirling twice. Who’s to say how a player will develop and when? Former Australian quick Ryan Harris once bowled medium pace. Who would have predicted George Dockrell the left-arm-spinner would one day become Ireland’s premier T20 finisher?

The Leinster Lightning coaches have rated Moondra though for a while. However Ireland needs to be better at talent identification than everyone else to compete, that’s just where we’re at. The story now goes that Ireland bowling coach Ryan Eagleson first saw Moondra at a clinic in Belfast. With the travel involved from Dublin, is this a case of Moondra finding us, instead of Ireland finding Moondra?

“It wasn’t on my bingo card” said Lorcan Tucker after clinching a 2-0 series win, and there’s been quite a few things you can add. Two debutant seamers causing chaos. Not to mention one being left-armed, bowling quick, as well as looking very calm and assured playing against the land of his birth.

Harry Tector bowling the final over - did anyone have that? Or indeed Ireland head coach Heinrich Malan announced as leaving his role less than 24 hours later with Gary Wilson quickly hailed as his successor. It’s hard to say you had a sense something was coming, but from the pictures all the celebrations came from the players. There were big smiles of course from Malan though possibly a feeling that this was now from a different part of his life.

Sarah Keane’s full vision as new Cricket Ireland CEO is yet to be fully sketched out but we’re starting to see parts of the picture. Financial cuts in some areas have led to a refocusing on others like the Pathway with more Future Series games than last year. You get the sense that more home international fixtures will eventually arrive if funding allocations allow, so hopefully more days like this when Ireland teams can expertly use their knowledge of home conditions to hustle visiting opponents.

So what actually happened at the Stormont Cricket Ground on Friday and Sunday? Who knows, and you know what, who cares. It’s been a few days since, but just keep drinking in the joy. After Saturday too, Ireland may never lose a game of cricket again - who is to say right now.

This article was originally published on the Substack: Dave Meets Ball