It began as a whisper on St Patrick's Day, 2007. Three weeks later, when Bangladesh were felled in Barbados, those whispers became chatter. And this June, when Bangladesh lost again, that chatter became a stream of request and demand for Ireland's admission to Test match cricket. It's a topic that has excited many correspondents on CricketEurope's various forums, and the Irish claim to Full Membership of the ICC has been championed by observers from across the cricketing world. But is an Irish test team a truly realistic prospect?

The aim of this article is to assess the suitability of Irish cricket to Test match status, and it does so by comparing the Irish reality with the parameters the ICC regards as essential to Full Membership.

At first glance, it seems that Cricket Ireland satisfies a good many of these requirements, not least the foundation of coaching and talent identification programmes, of accounting systems, and of sophisticated administration.

But what of the rest? The other criteria under consideration here have been grouped, for convenience, into four broad categories of my own creation. Part one of this article deals with Playing Strength and The Media; the second instalment looks at Finance and Culture and Domestic Cricket.

Playing Strength

As one might expect, the ability of an Associate nation to compete with Full Members over five days is rather highly prioritised as a criterion of admission to the top table. But is Ireland that good this soon?

Well, they would certainly appear to be a better bet than any other Associate. Almost peerless since the World Cricket League in Nairobi; dominant in the Intercontinental Cup, the Irish have also been giants of European age-group cricket with their Under-19s winning respect in the last two Youth World Cups.

The resume, however, is far from flawless. Despite the Caribbean heroics in 2007, there is nothing to match the Kenyans in reaching a World Cup semi-final. Nor has the ICC Trophy been the Irish preserve one might think: notwithstanding this year's triumph in Gauteng, the Irish were abject in Toronto in 2001 and demolished by Ryan Watson in 2005. The relevance of those failures is the ICC's consideration of the last three ICC Trophy events.

The A team, meanwhile, though European champions, was comprehensively beaten by nothing more than a Yorkshire Academy side in June, not to mention an MCC XI composed primarily of retired and Minor County cricketers. Further down, there are even signs of weakness within a youth set-up that, in the recent past, had been unrivalled: do you think that Jersey would beat the under-15s of any current Test nation?

Two specific points within the ICC's 'playing requirements', however, warrant particular concern, the first being 'the performance of individuals in overseas first-class competitions'. Here, you might think, the case for the Irish is strongest, since no other Associate has so many players in regular or recent First Class action (or, indeed, young cricketers on counties' books).

But what is less compelling are the bare statistics. Indeed, only a little analysis demonstrates just how far from 'Test' quality even our better cricketers remain. Below, we compare the First Class records of Irish-qualified cricketers who have recently played in both the Intercontinental Cup and in professional First Class cricket. (These statistics were drawn up on 15 September 2009.)

Overall batting average Excluding Ireland matches
A White 44.06 14.50
A Botha 42.44 28.21
N O'Brien 35.41 31.58
W Porterfield 32.09 27.08
T Johnston 23.00 7.33
R West 18.52 16.67
G Wilson 14.11 3.67
Overall bowling average Excluding Ireland matches
T Johnston 19.47 68.67
A White 27.05 72.00
A Botha 27.72 38.08
B Rankin 28.78 32.91
R West 37.77 50.16

For any Irish cricket fan, the numbers on the right don't make for pleasant reading, and they raise a number of serious questions. How can a nation expect to field a Test XI when only seven of its current players have ever been considered good enough to play First Class? Should an aspirant Test nation have its best batsman averaging just 31 in one of the weaker professional competitions in world cricket? Of a future Test nation's bowlers, should none average lower than 30? I guess not.

The second playing requirement is that of a 'sufficiently large pool [of teams and players from which] to draw capable of performing at the highest level of the game'. Ireland, however, does not have resources even approaching sufficient depth. This is something which so many who advocate Ireland's elevation to Test status fail to realise, simply because so much of Ireland's recent success has not been 'Irish' in the making.

Now, please, do not regard what follows as an attempt to diminish the achievements and the commitment of non-indigenous Irish cricketers; rather, these arguments merely underline how their efforts and successes have lulled many Irish fans into a false sense of ability.

Taking the determinant of 'Irishness' as whether or not a cricketer learned to play cricket in Ireland - say, between the ages of 11 and 18 - what we see is that the Irish national team has relied disproportionately on naturalized immigrants and those qualified through possession of an Irish passport.

Statistics of foreign players:

Caps Runs Wickets
FP Trophy 08-09 45% 29% 54%
All ODIs 35% 26% 49%
ODIs v Full Members 36% 38% 59%
ODIs v Full Members since July 2007 42% 45% 85%

A lot of these numbers speak for themselves, but a few bear closer examination. We can see, for example, that in ODIs against Full Members - only two of which, incidentally, have been won - there is significant dependence on 'imported ability': 36% of caps won against 38% of runs scored doesn't say much, but the same men have taken 59% of Full Member wickets, suggesting a shortage of quality home-grown bowlers.

Meanwhile, for completed ODIs against Full Members since the last World Cup, the record is even more unbalanced. In these matches, cricketers who learned their trade outside of Ireland scored 45% of the runs and - amazingly - claimed as many as 85% of the wickets.

Clearly, instead of progressing with products of the Irish youth system, the greater success has belonged - and increasingly belonged - to cricketers whose skill has been imported, rather than locally developed.

Of course, one might argue that precedent is set by current Test nations, not least England, who themselves have operated a generous 'policy' on cricketing migrants. Several Forumites have even compiled lists of recent English cricketers who, to their mind, are not 'English' and therefore evidence of hypocrisy among Sky Sports commentators who criticise Ireland.

Admittedly, those on Sky are somewhat myopic, but theirs is not the great crime some would have it. For instance, of the cricketers accused of merely 'becoming' English, Strauss moved to England when he was six, Prior came to Sussex at the age of eleven, while Shah was schooled in Middlesex. The critical stages in their development as cricketers, therefore, came entirely within the borders of the country for which they now play.

Consequently, of the 165 ODI caps awarded by the ECB in 2009 prior to the Champions' Trophy, only 14% went to cricketers - Pietersen, Morgan, Mascarenhas, Trott - who did not learn cricket in England. Moreover, they contributed only 11% of English ODI runs and took just 7% of the wickets.

In Test cricket, the relatively indigenous composition of the English side is even more pronounced. Of the 132 caps awarded so far in 2009, only eleven have gone to 'imports', who among them scored just 12% of Test runs and took a monumental 0.6% - stand up, Amjad Khan! - of English Test wickets.

Go on: compare those numbers to the Irish ones above.

The conclusions, therefore, are clear:
  • More than any current Test nation, and particularly with respect to bowling, Ireland is dependent upon cricketers who did not learn their cricket in the country they now represent.
  • This dependence is keener against a better quality of opposition.
  • This is a consequence of the fact that Ireland has not yet produced, through its own youth system, sufficient numbers of cricketers who are capable of succeeding in ODIs, let alone Tests.
  • The presence of non-indigenous cricketers has undoubtedly improved the performance of the Irish national team, but it has also grossly distorted perception of the general strength in depth of Irish cricket.

The Media

Next, we take a quick look at the role of the media in Irish cricket, something which is mentioned twice in the ICC's document. First, prospective Full Members are required to 'maintain close and regular links with the print and electronic media to maximise coverage'. Second, the ICC prescribes assessment of both 'the level of coverage of domestic game' and of 'facilities for media at major venues'. Both requirements seem understandable: professional cricket, after all, is an entertainment business.

For a start, with respect to the level of media coverage, one might think that Irish cricket is well-placed: from Callender to Bushe; from Carroll to Siggins; from Chambers to Boomer, every base seems covered by someone within a roster of more than two dozen committed commentators on Irish cricket.

However, despite the unquestioned value of the collective output of these gentlemen, the sense pervades that the nature of our Fourth Estate somewhat misrepresents Irish cricket's relationship with the wider media.

There is not, for instance, one active tele-journalist who covers cricket, while radio coverage is - in comparison with other sports - only fleeting. Look closer and you will also find that the greater number of journalists work voluntarily, part-time, or not-for-profit. Even those who are full-time are likely to deal with cricket only as a supplement to their main body of work.

Moreover, a good many journalists endure highly fractious relationships with the governing bodies of Irish cricket. Of course, 'twas ever thus, but in this context one gets the feeling that many administrators regard the media as an enemy, and not as a means to promote the sport we all love. Take, for example, the NCU's insistence that CricketEurope should not publish Premier League run rates until after the close of the 2007 season, or their then-PRO's apoplectic demand that one of my articles should be removed from our website.

Regarding the facilities available to journalists, the situation is not much better. Wireless connections, for instance, are often faulty or entirely absent, and while there is often a media tent erected in one corner of the ground for bigger matches at Stormont, what passes for 'the box' in the absence of the marquee is one that Pandora herself would not go near. Indeed, from experience, I can tell you that covering live matches is an easier task in Corfu, Jersey, and Spain than at most Irish grounds. The status quo, one might think, would not therefore be to the liking of Messrs Agnew, Selvey and the rest of Fleet Street.

So, while there is some irony in this article being published on a flourishing website whose content is comprehensive and perhaps indispensable to Irish cricket fans, the inconvenient truth remains: this is still an amateur sport with amateur players and amateur structures, and so dealings with the media - no matter how professional in its ethos - remain by and large amateur in practice.

The picture so far, then, appears less than rosy.

To be continued.