Ireland will revel in Lord's limelight but priorities are now elsewhere

WHEN Ireland played their one and only Test match at Lord’s prior to today, the occasion turned out to be as chaotic as it was historic.

- Malik Ouzia

Four years ago, England were memorably skittled for 85 before lunch on the first morning, fought back to win after rolling Ireland for 38 a couple of days later, with 92 from nightwatchman Jack Leach thrown somewhere in the middle, that turning out, somehow, to be only the spinner’s second-most famed innings of the summer.

“It was a Test match on fast-forward, really,” Middlesex seamer Tim Murtagh, who took five for 13 in the day one carnage, told Standard Sport. “It was a bit like Bazball but a few years ago.

“It’s one I’ll always look back on and wish we got those runs on the last day to win the game. That would have made it even sweeter, but what an experience, to have played a Test match at Lord’s.”

The build-up from an Irish perspective was geared around the game’s symbolic magnitude, a first Test at the home of cricket effectively rubber-stamping the full Test status granted by the ICC two years earlier.

For England, though, even with an Ashes series looming, the game crept up as something of an awkward afterthought, coming barely a week-and-ahalf after a World Cup Final that left most feeling in need of a long lie down.