Ireland consider 'home' matches outside Europe

Adrian Birrell:'I don't see a solution other than playing out-of-season' © Getty Images

As the curtain came down on a seven-week adventure that has put Irish cricket firmly on the world map, their outgoing coach, Adrian Birrell, warned that Ireland's cricket administrators will need to take radical steps to ensure that their top players, many of whom are now contracted to first-class counties, are available for future international engagements. Birrell, who hands over this month to Phil Simmons after five years at the helm, believes that the only solution may lie in playing the bulk of Ireland's fixtures outside the county season.

Ireland's ninth appearance of the World Cup ended in disappointment as Muttiah Muralitharan and Farvez Maharoof led a demolition job that was all over by the lunch interval, but the achievements of this squad has ensured that the coming season is set to be their busiest yet. In addition to their nine matches against county opposition in the Friends Provident Trophy, Ireland are set to take on Canada in the final of the Intercontinental Cup in May, a triangular one-day series with Holland and West Indies in mid-summer, and two further one-off games against India and South Africa at the end of June.

But Birrell said that Ireland would struggle to match their recent achievements, let alone improve on them, without the services of key performers such as Niall O'Brien, who is contracted to Northamptonshire, Eion Morgan (Middlesex) and Boyd Rankin (Derbyshire). Another of their key players, the opener Will Porterfield, is in talks with Gloucestershire, while the captain, Trent Johnston, 32, who works in the textile industry, dropped a broad hint that he would soon be announcing his retirement. Given the unparalleled experience that this squad has enjoyed in recent weeks, he is unlikely to be the only one.

"There's got to be a strategic decision by Irish cricket to hold onto their players, and how they are going to do that I don't know," said Birrell. "I don't see a solution other than playing out-of-season, where there's no clash [with county cricket]. We are at a disadvantage playing in our season because we will never be at full strength - three or four of best players are playing for counties. Obviously players who are ambitious want to play cricket at the highest level, as in Test cricket. And it'll be hard to stop them.

"It's a tricky one," he added. "On the one hand you want to piggy-back onto the counties with their professional game, but on the other you want to have all your players available for every match. Going semi- or fully-professional is the route, but this is all new to us. We've only recently got into the Super Eights, and now the world rankings. All of these problems are good problems to have, but I'm sure the ICU will be attending to that very seriously."

In the interim, the solution being advocated by Birrell and Johnston was to postpone the Irish international season until the end of the English county season, with a view to playing fixtures in countries such as UAE, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. If it sounded like an ad-hoc solution to an unexpected conundrum, that's largely because it was - after all, it's hardly a move that would establish the sport in the affections of the newly cricket-crazy Irish public. But the confusion reflects the maelstrom into which Irish cricket has been pitched. The road ahead is unlikely to be as full of fairytales as the past few weeks have been.