Ed Joyce used to play for England team as a batsman and he not only played for England but is currently playing for Sussex as well, and now he has been lucky enough to be picked in the Irish team squad for this year’s world cup.
Another beneficial news for Irish team is that Rankin, who was the leading wicket taker for Ireland at the end of world cup 2007 has also been included in the squad after he had fully recovered from his stress fracture in his foot which had kept him away from his team from about past 5 months.
The man in-charge for Ireland team has also selected Alex Cusack and it has boost the moral of Irish cricketing Fans all over the globe, and they will certainly be anxious for this year’s world cup (knowing the fact that they had defeated a former world champion Pakistan once and they are capable of doing some magic one more time in this world cup).
Though Joyce has played for England but he is an Irish lad by birth, and he has finally been cleared by ICC to play for Ireland. Which literally has made his dream come true for playing for his homeland and it will certainly produce some patriotism in him while playing for Ireland.
Even though his average was only 27.70 runs per match when he used to play for England but he has specially been selected for Ireland because of his good List A and First-Cl(–foul word(s) removed–) cricket performance (not to mention the fact that he is Irish and always wanted to play for england instead).
As we stated earlier in the article, Ireland created one of the greatest upset in cricketing history by defeating Pakistan with a huge margin. And to spice up the world cup 2011, it is announced that 9 same Irish players who were involved in that historic match against Pakistan are also included this year’s world cup squad. So we can expect Ireland may produce one more upset this world cup.
In a press release, Ireland team’s coach Phil Simmon informed to the public that he like the balance of the squad. As in the past few years of Irish cricket team, there has been quite a few allrounders, and that gives Irish team plenty of options in all departments of the game, now the main difference this time, from last cricket world cup of 2007, is that thirteen of the fifteen are only earning their living from cricket – that mean it’s practically a full time squad. Irish team were also able to spend 30 days or odd in India acclimatising, and that will give them a good ground.
Porterfield further informed that Irish team has been working much more harder in over the past few weeks and a few months and being in India during the month of November for the training has really helped the irish players in getting to where they desired to be.