Ireland - England situation is ridiculous

[CoverDrive]

I know technically there is nothing wrong happening here but it just feels very wrong. England with the abundance of cricketers is now attracting the best irish talent. yesterday was quite ironic with Rankin and Morgan contributing to England victory in a big way. Lets make Ireland a test nation - they are good enough and stop this situation. Surprising there is no media outrage at the situation. Replace England with India and Ireland with Bangladesh and see the outrage.

[gakgupta]

I genuinely think Ireland is ahead of Zimbo's and Bangla's, if England gives back all the irish players. Rankin is one hell of a future prospect

[Sidhoni]

Full strength Ireland will Rankin and Morgan will definitely be a lot better than Bang or Zim, probably at par with Pakistan.

[Trundler27]

2 decent players don't make a team better... Even a full strength ireland would not be better than the Zimbabwe side of the late 90s with the flower brothers, streak, campbell, goodwin, strang brothers, brandes, etc. In order for Ireland to get to test level they will need a lot of improvement with both bat and ball along with producing a string of talented cricketers on an ongoing basis. Rankin was actually part of the Irish team until fairly recently so it's not like they have never had him in the setup. They are also using guys like Ed Joyce and Murtagh who have/could play for England if ECB wants to use their services. IMHO, Ireland can never be a test playing team simply because of their relationship with England, their lack of producing a stream of talented players, and the poms habit of poaching half decent players from some of their favorite countries. At best, Ireland can be a competitive LOI side. I don't foresee any new team being granted test status for a long time.