Former English cricketers salute the Irish

By Vinay Anand

 

The United Kingdom was awash in shock and awe, a day after Ireland scored one of the most sensational upsets in the annals of World Cup. Expectedly, the English media took Andrew Strauss’ team to the cleaners.

By Vinay Anand

 

Bengaluru: Mar 3, 2011

 

The United Kingdom was awash in shock and awe, a day after Ireland scored one of the most sensational upsets in the annals of World Cup. Expectedly, the English media took Andrew Strauss’ team to the cleaners.

 

“Ashes to crashes: England stunned by heroic Ireland and quick-fire Kevin O’Brien,” proclaimed The Mail.

 

For the Irish, the world will feel like their oyster. Captain Will Porterfield said: “That’s the biggest win Irish cricket has ever had. Kevin’s innings was one of the best, if not the best, the World Cup has ever seen. Beating England in any sport is a fantastic occasion, and I’m sure a lot of people back home have been given something to smile about. It shows what we’ve been threatening to do for a while.’

 

O’Brien scored 50 in 30 balls and 100 in 50, 16 deliveries faster than Australian Matthew Hayden’s World Cup record.

 

Nasser Hussain, the former England captain, wrote in the same newspaper: “That was simply unbelievable. There will be a lot of talk about what England did wrong but what Kevin O’Brien did for Ireland was breathtaking. There was no luck involved. O’Brien simply took them from the brink of defeat to probably the greatest triumph in their cricketing history with a world-class display of proper, clean, one-day hitting.”

 

Nasser felt that all was not lost for England and he still fancied the team to do well in the knock-out, provided it gets there. “This is not a return to the bad old days. But it is one huge wake-up call,” he cautioned.

 

The Mail said that the Irish proved that “minnows have huge part to play in World Cup.”

 

Vic Marks, the former English off-spinner writing from Bengaluru for The Guardian, said “O’Brien was simply magnificent. Initially his innings had a Bothamesque feel circa 1981. Ireland’s position appeared hopeless; they were 111 for five in the 25th over, needing 328 for victory. But O’Brien decided he would have some fun anyway. ‘We could have pottered around for a while just for respectability’s sake,’ O’Brien said. But that is clearly not the O’Brien style.”

 

In the same newspaper, Kevin Mitchell wrote: “What happened in a half-filled Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday was not just the finest day in the history of Irish cricket. It was, certainly, a result and a performance better than their mythic win over a well-entertained West Indies team on a damp Sion Mills wicket in County Tyrone 42 years ago, and more complete than their upset of Pakistan in the last World Cup. But it was also a seismic event that shredded English complacency bordering on arrogance, a cricket match to warm the French cockles of Marc Lièvremont.

 

“It was a victory, too, that buzzed through all electronic conduits with the message that this World Cup – derided beforehand as loaded with soft and irrelevant fixtures – is no longer a place for comfortable assumptions.”

 

Geoff Boycott, the former England opener who is known not to pull his punches, wrote in The Telegraph, “This makes England’s match on Sunday against South Africa more important than ever. Then waiting in the wings are Bangladesh and the West Indies, who will both fancy their chances against England’s bowling. Unless that improves vastly, enormously, England can pack their bags now, because they will not be making the quarter-finals. Even if they do, everyone else will be queuing up to play them. They are a shadow of the side who won the Ashes. As soon as this World Cup is over the selectors want to start planning for the World Twenty20 in two years time with lots of young new faces.”

 

In The Telegraph, another former England cricketer, Derek Pringle, was willing to see the circumstances in which England came into the World Cup. Pringle wrote: “…the administrators who agreed England’s winter schedule must shoulder their share of the blame too, especially if England do not make the knockout stage, a possibility now unless they beat at least two of South Africa, West Indies and Bangladesh. The Ashes was always going to be draining whatever the result and to organise seven One-Day Internationals afterwards, with all the vast travel that entails, was an itinerary that would floor a Delhi donkey.”

 

The Independent, an Irish newspaper, summed up the game in its country: “Cricket in Ireland, so often played in forgotten fields in front of a handful of spectators and two blind dogs, has a way of elbowing its way into the national consciousness every now and then. Yesterday was one of those times.”

(Vinay Anand, 17, has an uncanny eye for detail. He revers cricket – looking beyond the glamour into the heart of the game where true passion, perseverance and grit meet. To him, there is no greater joy than coming closer to the sport while exploring its intricacies through his writing and treading ahead to establish himself as a writer and presenter) 

 

Pictures © Getty Images

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