Stirling 'frustrated' by Ireland's sparse summer schedule

Paul Stirling has admitted that his Ireland team are "underprepared" for their T20I series against England, voicing his frustration at a sparse summer schedule that has seen them go three months without a men's international fixture.

Ireland's men have only completed three matches during their home summer, losing another three to the weather when West Indies toured in May and June. A planned incoming tour by Afghanistan was cancelled, with Cricket Ireland (CI) citing "financial reasons", while the planned European T20 Premier League (ETPL) was again postponed.

While England's saturated schedule has prompted them to rest several multi-format players for this week's three-match series in Malahide, which starts on Wednesday, their Irish counterparts have been crying out for more competitive cricket. Those frustrations will not be helped by a poor weather forecast for Friday and Sunday's late-summer fixtures.

Ireland's winter programme should be busier, with a tour of Bangladesh later this year and some fixtures in the Middle East before the T20 World Cup. But Stirling admitted his frustrations that he had played so little this summer, and said that weather had hampered Ireland's preparations to the extent that Tuesday's training was their only full session before the series.

"We've probably been under-prepared, would be the honest answer," Stirling said. "It's nice to get together as a squad for the first time in about four months. We got a little bit of work done yesterday at the HPC [High-Performance Centre], not much done on Sunday, and a good session in today. That's about all we've had.

"We're looking forward to giving it a good go against England. We'll need things to go our way probably. It's just nice to get together. It feels like the beginning of our winter programme, rather than the end of our summer programme. That's the stage we're at. Certainly, it feels like the start of something, rather than the end."

This week's short tour was initially slated as a three-match ODI series in June in the ICC's Future Tours Programme, but was changed last year to a T20I tour with an eye on next year's World Cup in India and Sri Lanka and moved to mid-September.

CI scheduled a short 'best vs best' 50-over series earlier this month to fill the gap left by the ETPL, but only one of the three fixtures was completed. "We were supposed to have three or four weeks of highly competitive franchise cricket here, if things went well," Stirling said. "In theory, it would've been fine, but in practice, it isn't."

The primary reason for the slimline fixture list is funding, with CI regularly citing the exorbitant costs of transforming club grounds into international venues with temporary infrastructure. The issue should be alleviated in years to come by the proposed development of a permanent stadium at Abbotstown in time for the 2030 Men's T20 World Cup.

But Stirling said that his players were "obviously disappointed" at such a limited international schedule. "We can't hide that fact," he said. "We want to play as much cricket as we can. We're going to be judged on our performances on the pitch and to not have consistent cricket, which allows you to bring the best of yourselves throughout a summer, is tough.

"It is tricky, because you're expected to deal with those things no matter what. That's why international cricket is so hard: no-one will remember this in 18-24 months, when we hopefully do have cricket, that, 'Oh, by the way, their preparation wasn't good in 2025.' It'll be, 'X, Y and Z didn't do this, didn't do that.' It's really important that you're able to use your experience.

"It's not ideal. There's no hiding that fact. We want to play more cricket and fingers crossed, hopefully, we're going to travel to Bangladesh in October-November, from there, for 12 or 18 months, it's packed full of cricket. That's our hope. But it's certainly disappointing that in the summer months in Ireland, as a professional cricketer, you're not playing enough cricket."