England’s young brigade get the opportunity to atone for their incompetent seniors when the national cricket team meet Ireland at Malahide tomorrow. While the heavily criticised stars who failed to beat West Indies in the recently concluded test series travel home, a wildly different looking side get the chance to dampen the choruses for coach Peter Moores’ head and press their own claims.
Ireland on the other hand will be ecstatic at the chance to worsen England’s already dark mood. They’ll look to their 2011 World Cup upset over England as motivation for a shock win.
The Last Time These Two Met
Associate nations and test playing nations meet rarely. The last time these two sides met was in 2013 where England won by 6 wickets. The two matches prior to that were much closer however. A narrow England win in August 2011 was preceded by the famous Ireland win in the 2011 Cricket World Cup.
Form against one another and generally is well out the window in predicting the outcome of this one. The plethora of red ball cricket means both teams will be underdone, and the difficulty in predicting how the English debutants get on is obvious.
The Teams
England (likely): 1 Alex Hales, 2 Jason Roy, 3 James Vince, 4 James Taylor (capt), 5 Sam Billings, 6 Jonny Bairstow (wk), 7 David Willey, 8 Adil Rashid, 9 Tim Bresnan, 10 Steven Finn, 11 Mark Wood.
James Taylor leads England for the first time and takes charge of a team with too many (5) debutants to feature here. Zafar Ansari and Lewis Gregory are the other options in the 13.
Ireland (likely): 1 William Porterfield (capt), 2 Paul Stirling, 3 Ed Joyce, 4 Niall O’Brien, 5 Andy Balbirnie, 6 Gary Wilson (wk), 7 Kevin O’Brien, 8 John Mooney, 9 George Dockrell, 10 Alex Cusack, 11 Craig Young/Stuart Thompson
Ireland have lost Tim Murtagh from their World Cup XI in one of the few changes expected from the tournament earlier in the year.
The Key Players
Adil Rashid – He should’ve played in the final test in the West Indies. He is far more of a frontline spinner than Moeen Ali is and thoroughly deserves his chance to replace James Tredwell as England’s premiere limited overs and test spinner. Hopefully the lack of cricket he’s played over the past few months isn’t reflected in his bowing.
William P0rterfield – The Irish captain was their best performing batsman at the World Cup. In 6 matches he scored 275 runs at an average of 45.83 with a hundred and a fifty. He’s also getting some hand 30/40 starts in his first class matches for Warwickshire in the always difficult early season conditions.
The Match Odds*
England – $1.35
Ireland – $3.21
*Courtesy of Sportsbet Australia.
The Prediction
England’s young troops should have too much talent for Ireland’s ageing troops. We’re giving this one to England by 4 wickets or 50 runs.
The Best Bets
Sam Billings is a talented keeper batsman but makes this team as a specialist batsman. He’s listed to come in at 5 which could be perfect if their’s early movement around. Get on him to top score at $9.50.
For gimmicks sake try the Direction of First Boundary bet. The leg side is paying a decent $2.00. Surely one of the game’s openers has a pull shot or leg glance in them.
