McBrine and Adair dig deep to restore Irish pride and frustrate England

S teve Waugh’s Australians travelled to Gallipoli to get them in the right mindset for the 2001 Ashes. We must assume that Ireland made a similarly inspirational visit to St Johns Wood High Street on Saturday morning. The usually chi-chi thoroughfare is currently closed off for roadworks, where a hive of workers occupied in major excavations are manning JCBs and laying pipe. And if Ireland were planning to make it past lunch on day three, they were going to have dig even deeper than that.

An hour before play, Harry Tector and Lorcan Tucker finished their practice on the outfield and walked past the cordon at the nursery end. A couple of men in green shirts called “good luck” but the rest of the fans, in their England caps, paid them little attention. A sugary waft of baked goods drifted over their heads from the churros stand. It still couldn’t smell as sweet as what was to come.

Tector and Tucker – their names alone are worth a Netflix commission – are emblematic of their nation’s cricketing development. Both play their first class cricket for Leinster Lightning rather than an English county, with contracts in global T20 franchise leagues. After two dark days in the field, it was these pioneers who ignited Ireland’s greatest efforts in this game.

Tucker’s classical strokeplay had brought up the pair’s 50 partnership before he gloved a Jack Leach drifter onto his stumps with equal elegance. Tector revenged him with a lofted four off the same bowler. It was all a bit Homeric, even if Tector’s part was closer to Achilles than that of his rhyming namesake.

Ireland had finally mustered their reserves, and what followed was the first true battle of the Test, as Matt Potts stood down for Josh Tongue at the pavilion end, and