Testing times ahead for Ireland's cricket team

In all those years of success following that incredible 2007 World Cup win over Pakistan, there was a sense that the Irish sporting public couldn’t quite get their head around the fact they had a cricket team that was taking on and beating the best teams in the world.

Pakistan at Sabina Park in Jamaica on that St Patrick’s Day party to end all parties. England at the 2011 World Cup, the West Indies four years later.

In three successive World Cups, Ireland recorded stunning victories against the biggest names in cricket, that most garrison of garrison games.