A pitiless finish for Ireland, this, as sobering as a cold shower and a hot pot of coffee. For one brief, sweet moment, the third day blew their way, when Stuart Thompson bowled Olly Stone with the first ball of the morning. The wind was with them then, when Thompson leapt into his teammates’ embrace, and they beat back to the pavilion to ready themselves for the chase. There were two days to play and they were 182 runs away from a famous first Test victory. That may be the last thing they remember from this game, the rest of it is best exorcised, less it sour the memory of how well they played in the first two days.
Their captain, William Porterfield, was befuddled by it all. “It hurts walking off,” he said. “I don’t even know what we ended up on, 40-odd, was it?”
Not even. Ireland were bowled out for 38 in 94 balls, the seventh‑lowest total in Test history and the second‑shortest innings. If England were humiliated on Wednesday morning, Ireland were humbled, when the gulf between the teams grew so wide that Porterfield guessed his men were playing against the best team in the world. They were not. England are fourth in the rankings. But it must have felt it.
Chris Woakes swept through them from the Nursery End in a spell of irresistible swing bowling, supported by Stuart Broad, who bounded in from the pavilion, and bombed the batsmen with deliveries that spat up from back of a length. Ireland were no match for it.
Porterfield had a bad feeling in his gut all morning. Under the heavy grey thunderclouds, Lord’s looked very different from the happy, sunlit ground it had been earlier in the week and it seemed more of a great, gloomy Gormenghast of a place, foreboding under the floodlights.
“We knew it was going to be tough this morning, when the floodlights came on and the overhead clouds came in, and there was all that drizzle,” Porterfield said. “We just had to find a way to get through that first session. If we’d managed to do that, well, look where we are now, with the sun coming out after lunch, it could have been a different story.”
Porterfield even found himself wishing that Thompson had not done such a good job of mopping up that final wicket. If England’s last two batsmen had put together a little partnership for half an hour “it would have taken the early-morning conditions out of it”.
His biggest regret, though, was from two days ago. He reckoned the game had got away from them after tea on the first day, when Ireland fell from 127 for two to 149 for seven in just under an hour’s play. “That was the missed opportunity,” he said. “I thought that even before today started. I had it in the back of my mind after day one.
“Looking back over the course of the game, the back end of day one was the best time to bat. If we’d just got through that first 40 minutes after tea, we’d still have been batting on day two. And that would have pushed everything else that happened back too, so this morning it could have been England going back in there to bat in these conditions in their second innings.”
It is all if-onlys now. Instead of stewing on them any longer, Porterfield said he would gather his team together so they could reflect on everything they had achieved over the first two days.
“That first couple of hours in the first morning is going to stay with a lot of Irish players and fans for a long time,” he said. “And for Tim Murtagh to get up on that honours board, no one is ever going to be able to take away from him, regardless of the outcome of this game. He’d probably swap it for a win, but it’s something he is always going to have and that’s great for him and great for Irish cricket.”
Their disappointment at how badly they played in the fourth innings is a reflection of how well they had played in the first. Porterfield has been around long enough to understand that.
Fifteen years ago, he was working on the MCC groundstaff here, pulling the covers on and off, working spells behind the counter in the shop. “I wouldn’t have dreamed of this then,” he said. “I didn’t think then that I would ever be back here playing a Test match and to get that opportunity to do that is a fantastic thing.
“As much as everyone is gutted in the changing room, before we leave here I’d like us to reflect on that because this doesn’t happen every week and we can take a lot from the position we put ourselves in in this match. We can look back on it and be disappointed, yes, but still enjoy the moment and how we fought together in the last three days.”
