[Gowza]

Originally Posted by jeesh
We ll have to see, time will tell. But one of the things i remember reading in the O Brien interview- Ireland dont have a big pool of cricketers. Its a country where cricket is a minnow sport compared to football, rugby etc. Youngsters are not thrilled at the prospect of becoming the next international star, unlike Bangladesh where its every school boys dream.

Btw Kenya did dominate for a while. Their rise in cricket was 4-5 years before us and the performed admirably well until the mid 2000's. But after guys like Tikolo, Odoyo, Odumbe, Obuya etc came to twilight of their careers things started slowing down. Same can happen to Ireland.

In this way Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are far ahead. Both have a lot more depth compared to associate countries in terms of infrastructure, age group teams, player pool, quality of domestic cricket, coaching etc. Bangladeshi cricket wont die if Shakib Al Hasan or Mushfiq retires. Zimbabwe has also shown they can replace one departing superstar with a new one.

BD didn't have any FC infrastructure when they got test status though. Also none of us I'm sure have seen the quality of Irish domestic cricket, whose to say if isn't better than BD's, it's not like BD has a strong domestic standard, certainly not compared to county and a lot of Irish players seem to be doing quite well there.