Stormont, in Belfast, will become the 123rd venue to host men’s Test cricket
Matt Roller24-Jul-2024After a six-year wait, Ireland will finally play their second home men’s Test this week – but it will be staged in a different country to the first. Stormont, in Belfast, will become the 123rd venue to host a men’s Test; Northern Ireland will become the 23rd nation to do so, after the Republic of Ireland became the 22nd back when Pakistan played at Malahide in 2018.Cricket, like rugby union, is played on an all-Ireland basis: there is a single national team which plays as ‘Ireland’ and has representation from both sides of the border. Football stands in clear contrast, with two separate national teams. At the Olympics, some Northern Irish athletes represent Team GB and others represent Team Ireland.Northern Ireland has a strong record of producing cricketers, including several members of Ireland’s ‘golden generation’ in William Porterfield, Gary Wilson and Boyd Rankin. Six of the 14-man squad picked to face Zimbabwe this week are from north of the border: Mark Adair, Matthew Humphreys, Andy McBrine, James McCollum, Paul Stirling and Craig Young.”I’d be a very proud Northern Irishman,” Adair, who will lead the seam attack, tells ESPNcricinfo. National identity and politics are rarely discussed in the dressing room, he explains: “Much like rugby, it’s something that is obviously respected, but not really talked about. There’s no need to talk about it, which is a good thing. But I think it adds to the pride of it for me.”It’s obviously tricky, because you’ve got a small part of the emerald isle in the UK and the rest of it isn’t. If you start off in Belfast and drive an hour, the next thing you know, the speed limits are in kilometres per hour not miles, and the money is in euros instead of pounds. It’s something we’re all aware of, but it doesn’t really come into play.”Mark Adair: I’ve probably played more games on this ground than anyone else in the squad. It means the world to me•Getty ImagesAdair grew up in Holywood, a town just outside Belfast, and lives 10 minutes’ drive from Stormont. “The team hotel is further away than my house,” he says. After recovering from a minor hamstring injury, he could bowl the first ball in the ground’s Test match history on Thursday: “It’s really special for me. It’s something that I grew up never thinking I’d be able to do or have the chance to do… I’d struggle to talk about the significance.”After getting into cricket watching the 2005 Ashes on Channel 4, Adair can remember watching Marcus Trescothick score a century for England in an ODI at Stormont in 2006. “But the next few times I saw Ireland play there, I’d have been helping out with the groundstaff, lending a pair of hands and helping to get the covers on.”Phil McCormick, the head groundsman at Stormont, would ask a teenaged Adair for help, having captained him in club cricket. “There would be times when he’d need me to do something and I was too busy getting autographs of the England or Pakistan players,” Adair laughs. “There’s a couple of photos out there of me asking Gary Wilson to sign something for me.”It’s gone from that, to him preparing a Test match pitch that I’m hopefully going to be playing on… I’ve asked him not to cut it for the last month! He’s put a lot of work in, and fingers crossed, it’s a belter. I’ve probably played more games on this ground than anyone else in the squad… it means the world to me.”
I haven’t yet, but I’m sure I’ll get a text from my dad saying, ‘I need 27 tickets, could you sort that?Mark Adair is expecting family to come along for the start of the Zimbabwe Test on Thursday
Adair took six wickets on Test debut in 2019, including 3 for 32 as Ireland bowled England out for 85 at Lord’s. “I remember sitting in the changing room thinking, ‘it doesn’t get better than this’ and that we were going to play loads of Test cricket,” he recalls. “But then it sort of disappeared, and went onto the back-burner. I didn’t even own a pair of white pads for a few years.”Ireland’s precarious financial position meant they went four years without playing a Test, though they have now played five in the last 15 months. Their most recent fixture came in March, when Adair’s eight-wicket match haul proved instrumental in their first-ever Test win over Afghanistan in Abu Dhabi – and won him the match award.”I love Test cricket and multi-day cricket, and I really hope it’s something that comes back to Irish cricket more regularly,” he says. “Any time that guys don’t try and whack me from ball one, I’m delighted… the skillset that I have is pretty similar [across formats] and I love the idea of being able to bowl longer spells and read batsmen, and try to work them out.”At 28, he will have the opportunity to play his first home Test in front of his family this week, against a Zimbabwe side who have not played in the format for 17 months. “Our record against them over the last few years is close,” Adair says. “Zimbabwe are a great team for us to play against: they’re well-balanced and will be a good marker of where we’re at.”I haven’t yet, but I’m sure I’ll get a text from my dad saying, ‘I need 27 tickets, could you sort that?’ But I’m sure there’ll be a full quota of Adairs on the Saturday, and my other half will be down for most of the week… it’s just mad that I’ll be one of the guys on the field, rather than the little kid who’s having to pull the covers on.”