The Irish cricket team? Live on national television? On a Saturday afternoon? Whatever next?
While we hardy cricket fans clinging to this wet rock on the Atlantic fringe raise our hats in gratitude to Setanta Ireland for taking such a bold step (and also to RTÉ for showing half-hour highlights packages this week), the broadcaster must have been equally delighted that Ireland and Afghanistan provided such brilliant entertainment in what could have been a disappointing, spuriously-billed ‘final’ to the T20 World Cup qualifying tournament.
Despite both teams having already qualified for the finals – Ireland by beating Namibia in the morning and hence going into their second crucial, high-pressure game in one day – and the only prize at stake at the end of an exhausting tournament being a place in a slightly less difficult group, they managed to produce an absorbing, pulsating match of the highest quality that fizzed along from start to finish.
Karim Sadiq depositing Boyd Rankin – probably the tournament’s best bowler - into the stands for six from the very first ball of the match (and subsequently being bowled by Rankin via his own head), set the tone for a game that would be dominated so fully by two batsman, Mohammad Shahzad and Paul Stirling that it was almost the first ever instance of a cricket singles match.
Both look unlikely cricketers, particularly Shahzad. Short and tubby, this pint-sized Obelix in a helmet that looks set to slip down over his eyes at any moment clumps inelegantly about the crease like a small boy wearing his dad’s pads. He runs as if he’s borrowed somebody else’s legs, his facial expression varies only between distraught and agonised and his running between the wickets is so chaotic that he gets more withering glares from his batting partners than he does from the bowlers he thumps to the boundary.
It shouldn’t work. It just shouldn’t work. But what an extraordinary batsman he is.
Once the ball leaves the bowler’s hand Shazad's personal cloud of chaos evaporates: one shot off Rankin, a controlled, open-faced clip that rocketed to the backward point boundary was one of the shots of the tournament. His brilliant 77 from 57 deliveries out of a total of 152-7 was the Afghans’ only individual score above the teens.
He has no fear either: when he collided with the giant Trent Johnston, almost exactly twice his size, while taking a run the commentators suggested both men had been watching the ball. In fact they were both watching each other and neither was going to give way. Shazad may have ended up sprawled on his back, limbs waggling like an upturned beetle, but he’d made his point and this paunchy pugnacious ball of energy and shots should make quite an impression in Sri Lanka.
Stirling, now 21, has lost much of the chubby midriff of his teens and developed a barrel chest in place of the breadbasket, but still has the air about him of a baby-faced, tousle-haired Phil Mitchell. He went into this game having made 153 runs in his previous three innings, coincidentally the exact target Ireland were chasing, and, after William Porterfield had his stumps splayed by the first ball of the innings, high on confidence and in the form of his life he took command of events in much the same manner as Shazad had in the Afghan innings.
His first ball brought four runs with an effortless cover drive that fizzed to the rope, the second was sent with a flick of the wrists to the square leg boundary, his third was sent skimming to the cover boundary after a step away and a blur of the bat - from then on the result was in little doubt.
Big-hitter and rapid-scorer he may be, but Stirling is no slogger: he has a wonderfully assured technique. When he cuts and drives, his head and torso remain perfectly still; all the power comes from his arms and his faultless timing. When he reached his fifty from just 17 balls it was the second fastest half century in the history of T20 internationals. When he and Gary Wilson reached their fifty partnership Stirling had scored 44 of them.
When he finally fell for 79 there was a small moment of panic in the Irish ranks as Kevin O’Brien edged the next delivery to Shazad behind the stumps, but the chippy pugnacity of Wilson and finally the Popeye-forearms of Andrew Poynter saw Ireland through to a hard fought but ultimately deserved win.
It was a match that had everything: brilliant and terrible fielding, breathtaking catches and village green drops, shots both beautiful and agricultural, backslapping smiles and gritted-teeth finger pointing. Most of all though it had two unforgettable individual batting performances that would have graced the final itself.
Ireland and Afghanistan meet again this summer in two one day internationals at Clontarf on 3 and 5 July and a four-day game at Milverton on 9-12 July.
