Rankin rejoins Irish ranks with ambition renewed

On a resplendent Dublin day in September 2013, 10,000 Irishmen crammed into Malahide to see the ODI against England. Only sold-out signs greeted stragglers. It was the image that Irish cricket aspires to project to the rest of the world.

Many of those in Malahide had long cheered on Boyd Rankin. In a land brimming with stodgy medium-pacers, here was a different sort of bowler: big, brawny and venomous. Ireland aspired to be a Test team, and Rankin, with the pace and bounce he garnered from his 6ft 7in frame, had the look of a Test bowler.

Yet, thousands at Malahide were booing him. For Rankin, six years an Irish player and a proud product of a farming family in Bready, was now making his England ODI debut in the Emerald Isle. "We don't want our best players playing for England," read one aggrieved supporter's sign in the ground. "Irish cricket deserves better."

Ireland had been here before. In 2006 Ed Joyce made his England debut in Stormont a year after leading Ireland to their first World Cup. Three years later Eoin Morgan made the switch across the Irish Sea, playing for England a month after securing Ireland's qualification for the 2011 World Cup.

Rankin's defection was by far the most irksome. Joyce's switch came at a time when Ireland had only two paid staff, a chief executive and a part-time PA, and Morgan's at a time when Ireland were only flirting with genuine professionalism and Test cricket still looked like an age away. When Rankin made his England ODI debut, Ireland were a fully professional cricket team preparing for their third consecutive World Cup and had already declared their intent to gain Test status.

As his second delivery hurtled egregiously down the leg side for five wides, Rankin did not seem like a man relishing opening the attack against his friend and long-time international captain William Porterfield. After a torrid start Rankin responded admirably to take four wickets. Still, he did not much enjoy combining with Morgan, who scored a century, to inflict a defeat upon his home country.

"It was a bit of a strange experience to be in the England side in that game. It was not something that I would want to do every day of the week," he reflects. "You can understand the frustration seeing born-and-bred Irishmen not playing for Ireland. It was quite frustrating for fans that we weren't playing for Ireland at that stage."

Like Joyce and Morgan, Rankin's motivation for switching to England was simple. "I wanted to play at the highest level and at that stage it wasn't possible to play Test cricket with Ireland."

Rankin only got one opportunity to do so with England. In Sydney at the start of 2014, he was awarded his Test cap as England hurtled towards a 5-0 whitewash. He later found out that he entered the game carrying a serious shoulder injury, to which Rankin added a back spasm and cramp during the Test. His was an utterly miserable debut. The delivery that snared Peter Siddle caught behind, Rankin's solitary Test wicket, was his last for England in a Test.

The disappointment that he never got another chance still rankles. "I didn't feel I got a fair crack of the whip in Test cricket." So distressed was Rankin in the aftermath of the Sydney debacle that he even briefly contemplated giving up cricket altogether as he recovered from injury.

"I had a bit of time to think about that tour. It was quite a tough thing to come from," he says. "I'll always look back and be frustrated with how it went but these things happen for a reason and it wasn't meant to be."

At least Rankin's truncated England career has proved a boon for his native land. When he was ignored for England's Test squad to South Africa this winter, despite taking 71 Division One wickets at 22.88 in the two summers since the last Ashes tour, Rankin accepted his fate as an England one-Test wonder. Cricket Ireland then negotiated a deal with Warwickshire to cover the county's shortfall from Rankin no longer being England-qualified, and in January he made his Ireland return.

It was long overdue. Last year's World Cup painfully exposed the paucity of pace and variety in Ireland's attack. Since then Alex Cusack and John Mooney, who opened the bowling together in the World Cup, have both retired. Rankin turns 32 this July, but does not intend to stop for another "four or five" years. He is still young in bowling terms, having not become a regular in county cricket until turning 25.

In the World T20, Rankin will be used as Ireland's middle-over enforcer, a role he has honed for Warwickshire in recent years. A haul of 5 for 33 across his eight overs in Ireland's two T20Is against the UAE suggested his return to the Emerald Isle has been seamless. "It's just been really easy. It's still pretty much the same core of players as it's been over the last eight-ten years."

While Porterfield will envisage Rankin helping to topple Bangladesh en route to making the Super 10s, his greatest worth lies in the longer formats. Rankin hopes that his second Ireland career culminates in a chance at Test match redemption. "There is the possibility of playing England at Lord's in 2019 if things go our way. I'm hoping I'll still be around for that."

To earn that opportunity at Lord's, Ireland have to win the Intercontinental Cup, and then defeat the lowest-ranked Test team over four matches in 2018. It is a convoluted route, and hardly welcoming considering no country has won their inaugural Test since Australia in 1877. But the pathway for Associates to Test cricket could be opened up if a proposal advocated by David Richardson, for Test cricket to be played in two divisions, with seven countries in Division One and five, including two Associates, in Division Two, is agreed at the ICC Annual Conference in June.

"I'm all for that," says Rankin. "The standard of the top four or five is a lot better than the bottom four or five so it stops those games that are fairly one-sided and gives Associate sides coming in a chance to play the lower sides. It would be a big benefit for us if that were the case. We'd then try and get promoted up to the next level."

Since his return from England, Joyce has established himself as a fine advocate for Ireland's merits on and off the pitch. Now it is Rankin's chance to do the same.

Together with Porterfield and the O'Brien brothers, Rankin is one of four survivors from the side who toppled Pakistan on St Patrick's Day in 2007, the moment that awakened Irish cricket from its 200-year slumber. "We can leave it in a much better place than when we started, when it was very amateur and there wasn't much happening. It's improved a hell of a lot over the past ten years."

Enduring success would mean ensuring that Rankin is the last Irishman to play for England. "I'm hoping I'm going to be the last person to do it and that in the next few years we can kick on and get the opportunity to play Test cricket and more one-day cricket as well," he says, envisaging a future in which "Ireland will be a Test nation and we can afford to employ all our best players fully contracted at home, which would be our ultimate aim."

It is a lofty aim, but it is testament to Ireland's recent success that it does not feel like an absurd one. While Test cricket "could be too late for a few of us," as Rankin admits, securing it for future sides would be a fitting legacy for Ireland's greatest cricketing generation. As the disgruntled fan put it at Malahide three years ago, Irish cricket deserves better. Rankin's return increases their prospects of getting it.