THE BELFAST TEST

Somewhat overshadowed by the final Test of the Windies tour of England, a significant milestone was underway just across the Irish sea.

After 6 years away from home, Test match cricket returned to the island of Ireland and importantly, for the first time in Northern Ireland.

This was a ‘home debut’ in some senses for the likes of Paul Stirling, Mark Adair, Andy McBrine, Craig Young and Matthew Humphreys who all hail from Northern Ireland.

There were plenty of noteworthy asterisks that can be accredited to this Test match, one that was played in front of a modest crowd in Stormont.

The game itself was another step for Irish cricket as they begin to strengthen as a Test playing nation and garner more experience in red ball cricket. A win for them notched their total tally up to 2 wins from 9 Tests and marked back-to-back Test victories in 2024.

They will remain unbeaten in Test match cricket this year.

Captain Andrew Balbirnie has led Ireland to back-to-back Test wins

The lack of red ball cricket for Ireland has been a point of note with a conservative start to the longer form of the game. Not that there isn’t the desire for Test cricket in the country, quite the contrary, but they are extremely expensive games to host. Ireland’s opening Test game against Pakistan in 2018 was well attended in Malahide, but clearly an open field of play surrounded by temporary stands and staffed for 5 days is not cheap.

This time, Stormont was chosen and had perhaps more of a capacity County Championship vibe to it - well supported, but moderately so.

Thus for the first time in history, two independent Test matches took place alongside each other in the same country as the West Indies opened the batting in Birmingham whilst Ireland set about responding to Zimbabwe’s first innings in Belfast.

In a lot of ways, Zimbabwe and Ireland facing off against each other had much more of an unknown quantity to it than most other Tests.

How would the Irish play against a far more experienced Zimbabwe side who have a cemented and well established First Class system? Craig Ervine for example has played triple the amount of Tests that Ireland have ever played!

Would Zimbabwe cope in a relatively cold environment where swing would be key? 

Ultimately, the game produced a hugely entertaining result with the game constantly swinging from one result to the other with Ireland’s lower order kicking in to take them to their second innings target of 158.

Andy McBrine ended up winning the player of the match award for his 7 wickets and match winning 55 not out to get the Irish over the line.

This certainly wasn’t a game for Zimbabwe to feel embarrassed by the result as they did battle themselves back into the game, particularly when Ireland closed yesterday at 33-5 after some blistering bowling from Richard Ngarava.

Whilst these games don’t grab headlines in the same way that other Test nations do, they are still vital to the health of the game in countries where cricket boards aren’t flush with cash. Coincidentally, England announced on day 2 of this Test that they would be paying Zimbabwe an unprecedented touring fee when they travel to London next summer for a one-off Test.

This gesture is certainly one that will even the playing field and hopefully could spark other bigger nations to offer something similar.

It was an understated Test match certainly, but an important one in its own right.