My newborn son Oscar had his first look at cricket at 5.30am on Monday when he was with me as I tuned in for the TV coverage of Ireland’s much-delayed second ODI against United Arab Emirates.
If these strange days over the last year have told us anything, it’s that family has to come first so I’ll happily put up with watching the boys on the TV for now – amid the occasional shout at the screen.
The lads have been in touch from Abu Dhabi with messages since Oscar arrived last week and I’ve been delighted to inform them that he is feeding and sleeping well – most of the time.
He didn’t seem quite as concerned as I was with Ireland’s start on Monday when they slipped to 10-3 after the departures of Kevin O’Brien, Paul Stirling and captain Andrew Balbirnie.
Thankfully they regrouped very well to post a competitive 228-6 before Simi Singh’s bowling magic helped wrap up a 112-run victory.
After losing the opener in Abu Dhabi seemingly an age ago on 8 January, amid the postponement of the second game on four occasions because of Covid-19 cases in the UAE camp, it was important we got a win on Monday with the three World Cup qualifiers against Afghanistan starting on Thursday.
A 2-0 defeat in the shortened series would not have been a desirable build-up to facing Rashid Khan and Co.
In between the two UAE games, the boys also got in a practice match against Afghanistan where everybody got a bit of time out in the middle to blow away the cobwebs.
Series stalls after UAE are hit by Covid cases
The opening loss to UAE, which came despite Paul Stirling’s superb knock of 131, was disappointing but I certainly wasn’t panicking because Ireland teams have a habit of not starting tours particularly well.
The 10-day gap between the two UAE games wasn’t ideal but these are the times we are living in.
Safety has to come first. The last thing Cricket Ireland would have wanted to do would have been to go out there and pose any sort of risk and in any case, it was taken out of their hands by the local authorities in Abu Dhabi, which is the way it has to be in the current circumstances.
As I said in my previous column, I don’t think bubble life is going to be sustainable for a long period of time in cricket.
There have been a few cases of well-known cricketers not going to tournaments because they didn’t want to be in more bubbles and I can only see this increasing if things don’t change over the coming weeks and months.
Guys have to find ways to pass the time and I’ve had quite a few funny videos sent to me of the lads playing Call of Duty. You would think at times it was life or death for them – especially Andy McBrine with his headset on.
Campher again ‘hugely impressive’
There’s no doubt the guys will have been getting frustrated by all the delays so it’s to their credit that they were able to go out and produce a performance.
Granted, it was a wobbly start on what looked like a very tacky pitch as demonstrated during Kevin O’Brien’s two balls where he was about a second early on both of them.
Curtis Campher was again hugely impressive as he notched his third ODI 50 after his two half centuries during his opening three Ireland games against England last summer.
Sometimes you get a feeling that the higher level a guy plays, the more he is going to succeed and Curtis has already proved he is a quality player and a great acquisition for us.
He was able to rotate the strike with Simi Singh as well as going through the gears whenever the chances arose.
Simi was able to bring us home very strongly as he finished on 54 not out but huge credit has to go to Curtis for setting up that partnership.
He has a good confidence and air of calm about him which really does shine through when he’s batting.
The UAE innings thankfully became the Simi show as his remarkable bowling figures of 5-10 helped skittle them out for 116 after the hosts had sped to 46-0 after 9.2 overs.
‘Simi’s heroics had been coming’
That kind of day had been coming for Simi. He’s very accurate and coach Graham Ford always says to him to “just stay out of trouble”.
What Graham means is that Simi just needs to bowl his best ball all of the time and not over-complicate matters.
When Simi does that, it means the batsman has to make a play and do something different.
That’s why he got three caught on the boundary on Monday because his accuracy meant that they had to try something different as he wasn’t giving them easy singles.
It was just a very, very good performance from him, which didn’t surprise me at all because I’ve seen a lot of him from behind the stumps.
Overall, it wasn’t a 10 out of 10 Ireland performance but hopefully we’ll be able to look back on that game as the contest that showed the beginnings of steady improvement which was then maintained into the Afghanistan series.
Having had three games now over the past 11 days, in addition to daily training sessions, Ireland should be match ready to play Afghanistan though there is still always that small matter of turning up on the day and performing.
But we can go into the series with confidence. All of the bowlers have bowled well during stages of the matches so far and the batters have had time out in the middle as well.
We’ll have to be at our best to beat Afghanistan. There’s no doubt about that. To win that series we’ll have to play very well in two of the games.
The series against Afghanistan over the last 10 years have been brilliant so I’m really looking forward to watching the games and Oscar will be tuning in again I’m sure as well.
Article courtesy of BBC Sport
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