Scrambling and squeezing our way into cricket’s world elite

Graham Ford and his Ireland squad had long left these shores for warmer climes by the time the current chill descended, but the cold and wet of an already bleak Irish winter had long since reached his bones over the opening weeks of the New Year.

“It is a bit of a challenge but that’s a mindset,” he said before the squad’s departure for his native South Africa where they prepared for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers in Harare, Zimbabwe. “You have to get on with it.”

A native of Pietermaritzburg, Ford has amassed a bulging body of work as a highly-respected cricket coach on three different continents but the Irish weather wasn’t the only reason to wonder why he has made Dublin his latest base at the age of 57.