Dublin [Ireland], : Cricket Ireland has postponed their white-ball series against Australia scheduled for August this year due to financial constraints, reported Wisden.
Australia was set to tour Ireland for three ODIs and a T20I series in August before their massive three ODI and five T20I series against England. The chief of Cricket Ireland Warren Deutrom confirmed on Monday that the series was postponed keeping in mind the predicted financial loss the board could suffer because of its organisation.
“The simple fact for us was that because we have so few pitches here in Ireland that can host international cricket, we had to make a fairly difficult decision,” Deutrom told The Final Word podcast as quoted by Wisden.
“It required us to have to open up Malahide Cricket Ground, and if we were going to do that, we estimated it was going to be a very, very significant six-figure loss for us, to have to open up Malahide.”
“The fact is, broadcast rights wise, Australia would probably be the fourth-largest of all the various [opponents] that we would have… It would not even have covered the cost of the production, opening up Malahide and bearing in mind it is an entirely green-field site. Those, unfortunately, are the difficult decisions we have to make,” he concluded.
Last year in August, Ireland had hosted India for a three-match T20I series, which marked Indian pacer Jasprit Bumrah’s return to the game after a long time off due to injury. Hosting the match at Malahide requires some temporary infrastructure for the accommodation of more fans. In 2022, Afghanistan toured Ireland for a five-game T20I series in Belfast, which also needed some temporary infrastructure.
Last year, Ireland played a home ODI series against Bangladesh at home in England’s Chelmsford County Ground and have also staged their ‘home’ games against South Africa in England.
The Cricket Ireland chief focused on plans to build a new cricket stadium and justified the decision in terms of allowing an increased investment in women’s and age-level cricket.
“We are no longer a board that exclusively weighs itself by the amount of men’s senior cricket that we host. We are going to try and obviously play Australia again in the future,” he said.
“But we are playing 46 international matches this year. We are supporting 47 or 48 matches at the provincial level with our men’s Inter-Pros, our women’s Super Series; we have an emerging competitions; our Wolves [men’s A team] have been in Nepal; we are going to be hosting West Indies Under-23s this year. That is an awful lot of representative cricket,” he added.
Ireland’s next assignment is a T20I series against Pakistan next month and will also play Zimbabwe in a one-off Test, three ODIs and three T20Is. They will also host South Africa for a two white-ball series, which are also expected to face postponement or cancellation.
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