Cricket Ireland’s Hosting Dilemma Exploring Neutral Venues and Infrastructure Challenges

The decision came in the light of the fact that Ireland does not have a permanent home stadium. They played their first Test at Malahide, near Dublin, in 2018, however, due to the high costs of temporary infrastructure, they played their next six Tests overseas.

South Africa was initially set to to tour Ireland for a series featuring three ODIs and three T20Is in July, however, they will now play two ODIs and three T20Is in Abu Dhabi in September.

“This fixture schedule attempts to strike a balance of competitive, high-quality cricket across multiple formats whilst addressing the challenges we face concerning our current infrastructure constraints,” Cricket Ireland’s chief executive Warren Deutrom said.

“While we work on longer-term solutions for some of these challenges most notably continuing to advocate to the Government for the proposed permanent stadium we know we’ll have to explore ways to creatively increase our capacity to host an ever-increasing schedule in the short term.

“Continually reviewing how best to optimize our hosting arrangements for cricket in Ireland and playing a few of our home matches in neutral venues overseas is something we must continue to explore, as we have done with the South Africa series this year.”

Before the South Africa series, Ireland is scheduled to host Pakistan for a three-match T20I series in May, followed by a one-off Test match against Zimbabwe in Stormont, Belfast from July 25-29.