Ireland’s Test Drought Finally Ends But Doubt Remains Over Cricket’s Expensive Five-Day Format

It’s years in the making, four actually, but Ireland will finally break their Test cricket drought during a tour of Bangladesh in April.

A one-off Test in Dhaka will be just Ireland’s fourth Test match since becoming a Full Member in 2017. They are also scheduled for one-off Tests against Sri Lanka, England and Zimbabwe this year to illustrate Ireland’s penchant for the five-day format.

“Our players are keen but we have to be realistic,” former Cricket Ireland chair and International Cricket Council board director Ross McCollum told me.

It’s instructive that all of Ireland’s scheduled Test matches this year are away from home. They’ve only hosted one Test match, which was their debut in the format against Pakistan in 2018 which cost them around a million Euros.

Ireland aren’t slated to host a Test until mid-2024 against Zimbabwe, who are similarly a cash-stricken smaller Full Member with limited opportunities in red ball cricket.

“With the budget we have it is much easier to play away,” McCollum said. “Our annual turnover is around 10-12 million, so it’s a sizeable chunk out of that to host Tests.

“It’s very difficult for us to play Test cricket. Our priorities have been with T20 and ODI World Cups,” he added with Ireland just a few months ago having beaten eventual champions England at the T20 World Cup.

“Ideally we want to play Test cricket. But only a few countries are financially able to play Test cricket and can put bums on seats.”

Those countries are, of course, powerhouses India, England and Australia who each boast billion dollar broadcast deals which underpin being able to play Test cricket regularly.

Ireland’s mid-year Test against England is their sole Test match against the power trio in the next four-year cycle. Cricket Ireland administrators had hoped an annual one-off Test against England could become a permanent fixture in the English summer, but that still appears a way off.

Their lack of opportunities is exacerbated by not being part of the nine-team World Test Championship (WTC) with fellow small Full Members Afghanistan and Zimbabwe also shunned.

There are 12 Test nations, but Afghanistan, Zimbabwe and Ireland have been left out of a competition hoped to revitalize five-day cricket.

“I think WTC is important because it creates context,” McCollum said. “Ideally it would have been expanded to 12 members and I would have liked to have seen two leagues with promotion and relegation.

“But some countries didn’t want it because they might have fallen into relegation and 12 teams in one division is too hard because of the crammed calendar.”

With a slew of countries such as Ireland clearly requiring more funding to play Test cricket, it puts more onus on what shapes as a defining distribution of the ICC’s $3 billion media rights for the next four years.

Under the current funding model, Ireland are granted $37 million along with Afghanistan while Associates, who have 96 members but don’t have Test status and are reserved just three seats on the all-powerful ICC board, receive a relatively paltry $180 million.

India receive $371 million well ahead of England ($127 million) while seven Full Members headed by power Australia are allocated $117 million.

“There needs to be more money to keep everyone competitive,” McCollum said. “We can’t be on what we’re receiving right now. We need to invest in our structures like under-19s and to keep pathways at a good level but that takes a significant amount of money.”

Discussions over the financial model are likely to be thrashed out over several board meetings in what shapes as crucial for the sustainability of Test cricket beyond the trio of powerhouses.

As debate and politicking ensues, Ireland will at least be finally donning the whites with red ball in hand in Bangladesh.