Tuesday evening’s World Twenty20 Cricket clash between Ireland and England has an intriguing unique subtext: England’s best player is a Dubliner.
Eoin Morgan represented Ireland at the One-Day International World Cup in the West Indies in 2007, when he played against England at the same Providence Stadium in Guyana where he will face his countrymen this evening.
That 2007 competition catapulted the Ireland cricket team to the national consciousness, following the stunning victory over Pakistan which sent the boys in green into the Super 8s stage.
However, while Jeremy Bray, the O’Brien brothers Niall and Kevin and Aussie native Trent Johnston became as close to household names as Ireland international cricketers are likely to get, Morgan’s own form let him down.
Then just 20, he went into the tournament on the back of some breathtaking innings, including a double-century in a first-class international against the United Arab Emirates.
Morgan played all nine World Cup games but his top score was just 28 against South Africa, and his average for the tournament a lowly 9.
He went for a duck on two occasions, but perhaps the most disappointing outing was that game against England, when he was run out for two runs having faced just seven balls.
Fast forward three years, and Morgan is unrecognisable from the promising but raw youngster who struggled back then.
He had already signed a professional contract with Middlesex before that 2007 World Cup but his form has gone stratospheric since then.
Handed a place in the England Lions squad – effectively a development panel – for the past two winters, he has yet to win a call-up to the Test squad, but he is one of the brightest talents in the shorter, more explosive Twenty20 form of the game and has quickly become a key player since graduating to the England side.
Against the West Indies on Monday, he hammered 55 off 35 balls, including three sixes and a reverse sweep which almost carried the rope and had the Sky Sports commentators eulogising Morgan’s genius.
That game ended in controversial defeat for England after the Duckworth-Lewis method was implemented – we don’t really understand it, but then again nobody does – leaving Tuesday’s clash with Ireland as a winner-take-all event in the race for the Super 8s.
Irish cricket supporters will watch the game with mixed emotions but few of them would be too concerned if Morgan went the way of the last Dubliner to play against Ireland in a cricket international.
In that One-Day World Cup three years ago, Ed Joyce opened the innings for the English. He was out for one, bowled by Boyd Rankin’s fifth ball.
– Shane Breslin
Follow Ireland v England from 6pm via JOE’s Tracker over in Sports.
