Cricket Ireland on Tuesday (July 28) announced a 14-member squad for the opening One Day International of the three-match ODI series against England starting on July 30 at the Ageas Bowl.

The tourists have picked their team from a pool of 22 players, although, the remaining players will stay as reserves in the bio-secure bubble in Southampton.

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Ireland included two uncapped players Curtis Campher – who has played one List A game and three T20s and Harry Tector, who has experience of the 20 T20Is, to their 14-member squad for the England ODIs.

The chairman of the national men’s selectors Andrew White said the squad was selected on the basis of the form showed in the two warm-up games as well as the form before the COVID-19 lockdown.

White stated on Tuesday: “These ODIs are not only a great opportunity for our squad to test themselves against the world champions, but are extremely important in the context of qualification for the 2023 Cricket World Cup. Every player in our squad is lacking game time as a result of the lockdown, so the two warm-up games gave the players an opportunity to gain their first competitive action since early March and there were some very positive performances on display over those two matches.”

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He further added, “However, our deliberations on selection took into account not only those two warm-up games but also form shown earlier in the year before lockdown. In addition, we also took into account that we have a larger squad here than would be normal, so we decided on a side for the first game only at this point. This means that the eight players who miss out on this playing squad may still have an opportunity to feature in the series.

Many players on this trip can consider themselves unfortunate to miss out on the first matchday squad, including our leading wicket-taker in 2019, Mark Adair. As fans are aware, Mark underwent surgery earlier this year, and while that was successful, it has unfortunately meant that he is not yet back to the level that we need him at for international cricket. We know that he isn't far away, but we also need to recognize that Sunday's game was his first competitive outing since the Caribbean in January.”

Noteworthy, the first ODI will be played on July 30 in Southampton, while the remaining two ODIs will also be played at the same venue on August 1 and 4 respectively.

Here’s Ireland Squad for the first ODI:
Andrew Balbirnie (c), Paul Stirling, Curtis Campher, Gareth Delany, Josh Little, Andrew McBrine, Barry McCarthy, Kevin O’Brien, William Porterfield, Boyd Rankin, Simi Singh, Harry Tector, Lorcan Tucker, Craig Young.

(With CI Inputs)