Cricket Ireland have announced that Malahide Cricket ground in Dublin will be the venue for Ireland’s ODI against England in May 2019. The ODI on 03rd May 2019 will be followed by the first ever Test match (4-day) between Ireland and England, at Lord’s Cricket Ground from 24th – 27th Jul 2018.
The ODI will be part of ICC Future Tours programme (FTP) and is now subject to final agreement of terms with the host club, Malahide. 2019 will be the first time Ireland is part of the FTP and it will help Cricket Ireland in knowing their fixed fixtures for the foreseeable future and allocate matches to respective club grounds in the country. As it stands now, Malahide, Clontarf, Stormont and Bready are the ICC approved grounds in Ireland to host International matches (Test/ODI/T20I).
Ireland, having not qualified for the 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup through the qualifiers held in Mar 2018 in Zimbabwe, will get the opportunity to put up a good show against the World Cup host’s to push the case for more teams to feature in the future editions of the World Cups.
England were beaten by Scotland, when the former visited the country for a lone ODI earlier in 2018 and with Ireland having already beaten them in the 50-overs format before in the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup in India, the lone ODI will bring in much attention and interest from the global viewers.
Ireland successfully hosted India (2 T20I’s) and Pakistan (Test) in 2018 with prominent broadcasting deals made to provide global coverage of the matches.
