Seemed like a rather strange last over. Gave up no runs in the first three balls, with a run out thrown in there. Then he conceded 12 in the last three balls to their number nine.
Anyway, congrats to the boys. 
[quote=“Bandage, post: 799328, member: 9”]Ireland qualified for CWC 2015 in Australia and New Zealand by virtue of an exciting tie earlier on today against Holland.
It wasn’t crucial that we got a result today but the tie ensures we’ll finish top of that league of associate nations and so we’re the first one of them to qualify.
We had beaten Holland the other day in the first of two games.
I’m back supporting the team now after my John Mooney protest. He shipped 10 runs off the last 2 balls today to lead to the tie.[/quote]
I’m not supporting the cunts ever again.
Congratulations to the boys (Rocko, where’s the Irish flag smiley?) Can’t wait to support them over here in 2015. I rather like the Irish cricket teams apparel and will be purchasing a suitable polo shirt.
Trent Johnston will retire at the end of the year. He’s still an amazing performance, and it’s a shame for him that he will just fall short of making a World Cup in his native country. He’s been a key man in all our big performances over the last few years, and he’ll leave a big hole. A great career for Ireland.
Trent Johnston, who has been in the vanguard of Ireland’s recent renaissance, has announced he will retire from international cricket at the end of the year. The 39-year-old will play in the World T20 qualifiers in UAE in November, and finish his Ireland career in the ICC Intercontinental Cup final in Dubai in early December.
“It’s been a difficult decision and I’ve racked my brains ever since I came back from the UAE tour in March”, Johnston said. “It’s becoming harder to recover after matches now, so much so that I can hardly walk for a couple of days.”
He explained that after that two-week tour he could only put on and take off his socks with the help of his children, Charlie (10) and Claudia (13). “I knew then my time was limited and although it would have been great to play in another World Cup in Australia, it was just beyond me. It’s time to move on to new things and give Phil Simmons a chance to find somebody to replace me.”
Johnston’s announcement comes just after Ireland qualified for the 2015 World Cup and the final of the Intercontinental Cup. “I’d set myself personal goals at the start of the year and I’ve been slowly ticking those boxes as we go along. I always knew we were going to qualify for the 2015 World Cup with the squad we have, and the standard we’ve been playing at for a few years now. I’ve achieved a lot in my career and I’m pretty happy with how it’s all went.”
A native of Wollongong, New South Wales, Johnston played several first-class games for that state before he was released in 2000. During the 1990s he had played as a club professional in Dublin, where he met his Irish wife Vanessa, so was intrigued by an approach by a former team-mate, Jason Molins, who was by then Ireland captain. Molins had worked out that by virtue of his marriage Johnston was now entitled to an Irish passport - and a place in the team currently taking shape under Adrian Birrell (who was last week appointed assistant coach to South Africa).
He packed his bags and made his Ireland debut one week after his 30th birthday - and went on to play 186 games for his adopted country, including 65 ODIs, 28 T20Is and 27 first-class games. His 264 wickets is the third-highest ever for Ireland, while his 60 appearances as captain is second only to his successor, William Porterfield.
It is as the charismatic captain of the first Irish side to play in a World Cup that he will be best remembered. Their first two results, a tie with Zimbabwe[/URL] and win [URL=‘http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/247465.html’]over Pakistan, took them into the Super Eights, with Johnston’s six into the grandstand the final blow for Inzamam ul-Haq’s team.
“I was incredibly proud to wear the shamrock and to lead your country 60 times including a World Cup was just massive for me”, he said. “That first World Cup put Irish cricket on the map and it has kick-started the cricketing expansion that we’re witnessing now. It was a privilege to be part of that.”
With Johnston’s doing a ‘chicken dance’ after each wicket, Ireland went on to further impress in the second phase, beating Bangladesh to elevate them to the official ODI status at which they continue to challenge the Full Members. He also captained Ireland to their first international trophies, the Intercontinental Cup wins of 2005 and 2007.
After a brief retirement following a gruelling tour of Bangladesh in 2008, Johnston returned to lead the Irish attack for four more years. That he is still a leading figure in Associate cricket on the brink of 40 is down to a Spartan work-ethic and being able to concentrate full-time on the game since being centrally-contracted in 2009. “The back-up I’ve got from Cricket Ireland, and my friends and sponsors Philip Smith and Patrick Nally of RSA, has given me a chance to play on long after I expected,” he said.
Johnston intends to move into full-time coaching, and has already racked up a strong CV with the Leinster Lightning, who have dominated Ireland’s new regional competitions. “The Lighting has been a great experience for me, and a big step up from coaching clubs in an amateur set-up”, he told ESPNcricinfo. "Because funds are tight I’ve had to do a lot more and take more responsibility. You’re involved in selection, media work, and organising training sessions and game plans so it has brought a new dimension which is really interesting.
“Towards the end of my Ireland career Simmo gave me extra responsibility in preparing the bowling department and working with the guys there, which was good experience, and I also went to the Women’s World Cup qualifier in 2011 as Jeremy Bray’s assistant.”
Cricket Ireland isn’t in a position to hire Johnston, but hopes ICC funding down the line might provide an opportunity. “Warren Deutrom has been honest with me, but I don’t really know if I can stay in Ireland to progress my coaching career,” Johnston said. “It would be great to pick up a job as an assistant or bowling coach and continue to learn the trade. But I know to do that I’d have to travel, which would present challenges. That’s something we’ll deal with if it arises. Hopefully there will be offers and it’s my main priority now to get something nailed down for after December.”
Current Ireland captain William Porterfield said: “It’s pretty hard to sum up the impact that TJ has had on Irish cricket and what he has achieved. He has brought so much to the squad both on and off the field, leading by example not only with the new ball, but in showing what it means to pull on the Irish jersey by his work ethic off the pitch. I look forward to enjoying the rest of the season with him and sending him out on a high in the Intercontinental Cup final in December.”
Coach Phil Simmons also knows he has a large hole to fill in his attack. “Trent has been one of the pillars of this team. He’s been incredibly consistent and gotten vital wickets at crucial times spearheading the bowling unit. His experience has been invaluable, his dedication and work ethic has been exceptional.”
Irish supporters will give the man they call ‘TJ’ a fitting send-off on September 3 when Ireland play England in the RSA Challenge at Malahide.
Shocking grammar from you braz. The loss must’ve hit you hard
I suspect Coppers hit me harder.
Sorry to hear that, he’s been a great servant to the cause and a major reason behind the continued success of our cricket team. I think I mentioned before that I used to work with a bloke who grew up with him in Wollongong who said he was a very decent skin. Fair play to you Trent
My favourite TJ memory was from his Clontarf days. The bhoy[/USER] was fielding at fine leg and chatting to [USER=1]Rocko at the boundary rope. He lost a bit of concentration and the opposition ran two when the bhoy really should have limited it to one run. TJ completely lost the head with the bhoy and fucked and blinded him out of it for around 30 seconds before going back to his bowling mark. He simply demanded the highest standards from everybody.
Trent is a sound skin in fairness
He used to do some fierce sledging to me when I was batting for Malahide. he used to slag me about my portly belly and the fact that I gave up a promising GGA career to play cricket, he took my convict jibes well though
best of luck to him
[quote=“The Wild Colonial Bhoy, post: 802123, member: 80”]Trent is a sound skin in fairness
He used to do some fierce sledging to me when I was batting for Malahide. he used to slag me about my portly belly and the fact that I gave up a promising GGA career to play cricket, he took my convict jibes well though
best of luck to him[/quote]
I find it hard to believe that you have a portly belly TWCB.
Ger Siggins is after having a right old pop at England in an article on Cricinfo.
http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/667597.html
[I]Reg: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
- Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979[/I]
Irish sports fans do have to thank the English for quite a lot. But apart from football, rugby, tennis, cricket, table-tennis, boxing and hockey, what have the English ever done for us, really? Ahead of their biennial visit to Malahide this week Irish cricket followers are grumbling about our nearest neighbour more than ever.
Warren Deutrom, Cricket Ireland’s chief executive, politely insists that the ECB “does as much as they have the time, effort and resources to do” but many of we long-suffering aficionados of Irish cricket are not so sure.
It’s not just that their selectors have been grooming and cherry-picking our best players for more than a decade. Nor that they have rubbed our noses in it by selecting one Irishman to captain England - at his former club - and another to make his one-day debut here.
Nor even that they have ridiculed Cricket Ireland’s best efforts to create a national stadium in a village field and sell 10,000 tickets to watch the nations clash by sending a team devoid of any of its household names.
No, although all the above contribute to the throbbing ulcer, the real pain and anger is caused by the perception of an utter lack of support for Ireland’s efforts to lift itself into the game’s elite.
Perhaps Irish fans should be glad that the self-obsessed bunch that have just won the Ashes are not on their way. Certainly the manicured outfield in Malahide can do without the liquid deposits they left for the Oval groundstaff to mop up last Sunday. On their last visit here the response of one prominent player to a request for an autograph was to tell a nine-year-old to “f*** off”.
The three-times Ashes-winners seem pretty unloved in their homeland too, and it clearly rankles with them. When they took a 3-0 lead in that series the public reaction was underwhelming and focused on the team’s flaws - which moved spiky wicketkeeper Matt Prior to demand that supporters lay off the criticism and “show us some respect”.
And last week, when England fans who had paid £110 to watch a display of time-killing batting responded with boos, Stuart Broad - whose £500,000-plus annual wedge is paid out of those same ticket receipts - tweeted that “true fans” wouldn’t have done so.
The response of Independent columnist Michael Calvin last weekend was typical of the UK media which has fallen out of love with Andy Flower and Alastair Cook’s team: "These have been the counterfeit Ashes… the contests have lacked authenticity. The approach of the England management has been myopic and mean-spirited. Cook’s team have played in a vacuum of joylessness and indifference to their wider responsibilities.
“Matt Prior’s demand for respect, a dressing-room buzzword without meaning or merit, sums up their isolationism. It is the product of an overwrought, self-regarding culture which has manifested itself most ominously at The Oval, where the attempt to kill the game degenerated into a parody of professionalism.”
The England players talk of respect, without realising that the notion is one you command, not demand. And they are pretty slow to hand it out too, as one incident from the 2011 ICC World Cup illustrates. Ireland’s stunned England - and the world - by chasing down 327 in Bangalore, a victory which was largely down to Kevin O’Brien’s 50 ball century.
In his book Six After Six, O’Brien wrote about an incident during his innings.
". . . just after I got to 50, James Anderson bowled a ball at my feet. I got my bat down on it just in time. "‘Good ball, Jimmy,’ I said to him. "Anderson’s face darkened and snapped back, ‘What would you know what a good ball is?’ “‘Well, I mightn’t know what a good ball is,’ I came back with, ‘but I know a bad one. I just hit your last one over there,’ as I pointed my bat towards the grandstand.”
The cricketing relationship between our islands is like the whole of Irish history writ small: Oliver Cromwell banned it, the Duke of Wellington helped restart it, Charles Stuart Parnell scrapped over it, Eamon De Valera hid his love for it and Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley united over it.
On Tuesday, President Michael D Higgins will shake the hands of the teams before taking his place in the overflowing stands - a far cry from the day that one of his predecessors attended a match in the centre city ground of Trinity College during the Second World War.
‘Dev’ had dropped down from the parliament in Leinster House to meet Sir John Maffey, the British representative in the Irish Free State, who was playing in a charity match. De Valera picked up a bat and demonstrated some textbook shots, at which a press photographer hurried over to check out the commotion. Dev flung the bat away and fled, terrified at what his own, strongly Gaelic and nationalist Irish Press might be forced to write if a photo appeared of him enjoying the hated game.
That apparent need to keep Irish cricket as a guilty secret extended into this century in many quarters, but the surge in fortunes after the 2007 World Cup has at least taken the game out of those murky shadows.
But the one entity that keeps Irish cricket at arm’s length is the very one you might expect to be most keen on encouraging a promising neighbour. Ireland’s qualification for 2007 also meant games against ICC full members qualified for ODI status.
But when the ECB agreed to come to Stormont in June 2006, it tried to have the game downgraded. It wanted a 50 over ‘friendly’, meaning it could use up to 15 players willy-nilly, making a farce of the biggest game Ireland had played up to then. It took an intervention by ICC to force the ECB to accept the game’s status.
And when Deutrom began his visionary leadership of Cricket Ireland in 2007, one of his first initiatives was the Future Cup, a tri-cornered tournament also involving India and South Africa. This really infuriated the ECB which saw such events as a potential threat to its TV dominance of Western Europe and its lucrative deal with Sky Sports.
Heavy-handed threats followed but a deal was patched together that Ireland’s prestige home fixtures would no longer clash with England games, in return for which they would deign to visit once every second season.
In 2011, as he has this week, Flower sent over a second-string peppered with has-beens, would-bes and never-gonna-bes. They demanded a 10.15am start to facilitate an early exit, staying barely 30 hours in Dublin - in contrast to the Pakistan and Australia teams who came for a week and visited schools and clubs, giving a priceless boost to the development programme.
And the courtesy of negotiating dates doesn’t come into it, with the setting of this week’s game coming via a one-line email to CI saying “we will play you on September 3rd”. An Autumn Tuesday during the week schools reopened after the summer holidays made CI’s marketing campaign a far more difficult one.
But the most damage the ECB has inflicted on Ireland has been its grooming of our best players. Back in 2001 when Ed Joyce began his quest for Test cricket, few begrudged him his desire to push himself to the limit of his ambitions. One of his first games for England, a floodlit T20 in Southampton in 2006, gave him a good idea about how he was valued.
A nasty ankle injury saw him taken by ambulance from the field to hospital, some miles away. When he got the all-clear, after midnight, he limped outside in his full England kit where he realised he hadn’t a penny on him. His new masters hadn’t bothered to send an escort, or even organise his transport back. A Southampton taxi-driver took pity and returned him to his hotel, bruised inside and out.
Eoin Morgan was next, a brilliant limited-overs batsman but one whose Test career could well be over after 16 games, doomed to the same one-day limbo of his former comrades.
Boyd Rankin was coerced by his county to ditch his country, but now he lines up against them with just a faint hope of forcing his way into Test cricket and no way back to Ireland before the 2015 World Cup, when he will be 31. There are real fears that belligerent one-day specialist Paul Stirling could be next.
The last time England came to Dublin Morgan was made captain, which even the UK media decried as “indelicate” and “insensitive”. He saw it as a huge compliment to Irish cricket:
“I played with Ireland when Ed Joyce made his debut for England, when he played at the World Cup for England, when he scored his hundred at the SCG for England, and again it was a proud moment for Irish cricket,” he said. “The fact that you can pride yourself on producing guys who can play at the highest level is a huge compliment.”
Paying a compliment to Irish cricket was unlikely to have been foremost in the mind of the England underage coach that sidled up to Morgan and William Porterfield in 2000 after Ireland U17s beat England U15s at Oakham in Leicestershire.
“He was impressed with them, and encouraged them to go ‘down the England route’,” another member of the squad told Cricinfo this week. “The headmaster of the host public school offered Eoin a scholarship that very afternoon and the following year he was back and forth with Middlesex, the start of the qualifying process.”
Deutrom insists Ireland’s drive for Test status will head off this problem. ICC encourages full members to support associates in their region and the official view handed down by Cricket Ireland is: “I think they take that pretty seriously”.
He points to the Ireland women’s participation in the English county championship, the (rejected) offer to the men to play in the YB40, and to “unseen support” in coach education and player development as evidence of good faith. It also must be acknowledged that the counties have acted as a finishing school for Irish talent and provided a living when there was none at home.
The Irish people are noted for the warmth of their welcome to visitors, and Deutrom has been living in Malahide long enough to know how a good host behaves. He certainly won’t be welcoming his guests with a broadside, but even he must bridle when he reads names like Jamie Overton and Danny Briggs in the England squad, let alone those of Morgan and Rankin.
Tuesday’s game is a sell-out and the Blarney Army will certainly out-sing its Barmy counterpart. On the field, with no shortage of motivation, the team in green will be hoping to do the same.
Magnificent article.
It’s got me all riled up in advance of Tuesday. I might make my way down to the boundary after a rake of pints and abuse some of the no-marks those cunts are bringing over.
was in london over the weekend was reading the independent on saturday en route from heathrow to my destination on the tube, there was a very good article by some fella claiming to be the cricket correspondent for the Irish Daily Mail , basically he documented how England and Wales have done their best to undermine Irish cricket and how the final insult is sending over a second string 1 day side to play Ireland on a random tuesday in september ( which is the only date england would agree to) .
He also had a right cut of Owen Morgan, basically calling him a servile, treacherous cunt, apparently he declared for E&W as he wanted to play test cricket, obviously he didnt make it and now almost taking the piss he is returning to malahide to captain the team who show no respect rightly or wrongly for Irish cricket.
Morgan seems a right cunt of a man altogether
Ireland are defending 269 up in Malahide against England. Captain William Porterfield went to his century by lofting that orange bastard Boyd Rankin for 6.
TJ has already taken an English wicket. Come on the Ireland.
2 in an over for Tim Murtagh. We have these cunts in serious trouble. Is this live on Sky? Who’s in fortress Malahide? I need to find somewhere to watch this.
Not a sell out, pay on the gate, head on out Bandage
48-4 england
We could do with live updates from @Ebeneezer Goode
Edgy stuff - Ireland still with their noses in front but England are hanging in there.
Ireland really can’t let Morgan and Bopara get a partnership going. Take one of them out and things will look much rosier.
85-4 now after 22 overs.