Gary Wilson says Ireland are 'right up' for their Lord's date against England

Ireland coach Gary Wilson has insisted they are not treating this week’s one-off Test with England as "irrelevant" despite the absence of Josh Little.

Seamer Little will sit out the Lord’s clash in order to rest ahead of next month’s World Cup qualifying tournament in Zimbabwe following a busy first half of 2023 where the Indian Premier League was amongst his commitments.

Cricket Ireland’s high performance director Richard Holdsworth addressed Little’s omission last week and while he stated playing England was a special occasion, he admitted "it’s not a pinnacle event" with the main current focus on white-ball cricket.

Nevertheless, batting and wicketkeeper coach Wilson is adamant captain Andrew Balbirnie’s team will be right up for the occasion when play gets under way on Thursday.

"I don’t think we are coming here thinking this game is irrelevant or has no meaning," Wilson pointed out.

"We don’t want to take anything out of context, that this game is pointless and that the qualifiers are all we’re thinking about this year, because as a group we want to win every game we play.

"If we aren’t quite at the races, we will find ourselves under the pump very quickly with the way England play, so we’ll be right up for the occasion."

This will be Ireland’s fourth Test of 2023 after a one-off red-ball encounter in Bangladesh was followed by a two-match series against Sri Lanka.

Before this year, Ireland’s most recent experience of the longest format of the game had been a dramatic fixture at Lord’s in 2019.

England were all out for 85 on day one before they bounced back to win by 143 runs but this is a vastly different team with a new ‘Bazball’ approach under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes taking the nation by storm.

Wilson added: