ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2018

Ireland in 2018 Ireland became the eleventh Test-playing side a day later than expected, after the first day of their inaugural match against Pakistan in May was rained off. But then for four days they gave a fine account of themselves, recovering from a stumbling first innings, via a century in the follow-on from Kevin O’Brien, to set Pakistan a teasing 160 to win. At 14-3 the impossible suddenly looked possible, but a fourth-wicket partnership of 126 finally took the game away. The defeat, when it came, was entirely honourable; and certainly Ireland had given Pakistan a much harder fight than England were to do at Lord’s a fortnight later. But one worthy defeat, in the somewhat unnatural circumstances of a one-off debut Test, does not really prove anything about the soundness of Ireland’s promotion to Test status. Even at the time of the match concern was being expressed that several of the heroes who had taken them to this level were now perhaps past their best, with no comparable young talent coming through to challenge for their places. The retirement after the Test match of stalwarts Ed Joyce and Niall O’Brien only accentuates this concern, as does the fact that promotion to Test status now limits the opportunities for promising Irish cricketers to develop their game in English county cricket. So it is disappointing that, apart from the Test match, the national side played no first-class cricket in 2018, and, apart from a single Test against Afghanistan, neither is it scheduled to do so before another one-off Test against England in July 2019. Late in the year Cricket Ireland announced a review of the structure of domestic cricket in the island. Meanwhile in 2018 the first-class Inter-Provincial Championship continued as before, with three sides meeting each other home and away to settle the domestic title. In its five previous seasons (only the last of them first-class) that title had gone to Leinster, but the pattern was broken in 2018 when North West won both their matches against Northern and drew both against Leinster, while Northern frustrated Leinster’s title bid by holding them to a high-scoring draw in the last game of the season. So the inter-provincial title moved from Dublin to Co. Tyrone, and fittingly it was players from North West who led the way in the seasonal aggregates. William Porterfield, no longer playing in England, set an all-time Irish seasonal record by scoring 491 runs in all matches at 61.37 (458 at 76.33 in inter-provincial matches alone), and medium-pacer David Scanlon headed the bowlers’ lists with 19 wickets at 19.68, all of them in inter-provincial matches. During the 2017/18 season Ireland had been pipped for the ICC Intercontinental Cup by fellow new Test nation Afghanistan, but at least they had the satisfaction of beating longstanding rivals, Scotland, by 203 runs in their last first-class match before promotion to the Test match ranks. (KSW) Interprovincial Champioship 2018: Final table P W L D BatBP Bow BP Adj Pts 16 0 3 1 North West 4 2 0 2 10 16 0 64 2 Leinster 4 1 0 3 13 12 -1 49 3 Northern 4 0 3 1 11 13 0 27 Adjustments Leinster: 1 point deducted for slow over-rate in match against North West on 1st May 2018 655