Union must husband talent

Cricket Column: The senior international season may have wound down for the month of July before the European Championships in August, but the representative underage scene is really just kicking off for the summer.

Every age group from under-11 to under-19 will be involved in some kind of interprovincial or international competition in the coming weeks, giving a couple of hundred kids from Dublin to Belfast to Derry the chance to show what they can do in front of selectors and development officers.

The importance of these tours and tournaments for Ireland's young players can hardly be overstated, and it is to the credit of the ICU and its regional unions that they have been expanding in recent years.

Leinster's development officer Brían O'Rourke has been in the job for seven or eight years and has seen the fruit of these underage initiatives.

Since O'Rourke got involved, John Mooney, Niall O'Brien, Kevin O'Brien and Eoin Morgan have come through from Leinster youth teams to represent Ireland at senior level, and O'Rourke is adamant the continued success of the Irish team is reliant on an effective structure to give young cricketers the opportunity to play against similarly talented youngsters from other regions and countries.

"They have more opportunities now than ever before," said O'Rourke. "But people like Eoin Morgan and Niall O'Brien have worked hard to get where they are. They benefited from being able to go overseas in the off-season or working with the MCC and then county clubs in England, but it still doesn't come easy.

"What we are trying to do is afford that opportunity so that at least the possibility is there."

One of the drawbacks of Irish underage success is that it has made our young cricketers more attractive to professional sides across the Irish Sea. At present, several players are out of the Irish club scene because of commitments to English counties.

Ed Joyce, Morgan, Niall O'Brien, Boyd Rankin and others are making their living from the game in England, while others such as Gary Wilson, Gary Kidd, William Porterfield and Fintan McAllister have trials coming up or have been contacted by counties with the view to making names for themselves as professional cricketers.

And they are being spotted even younger. Two 15-year-olds, Graham McDonnell and Andy Balbirnie from Dublin club Pembroke, head to Middlesex later in the summer to take part in a coaching clinic and play for that county's under-17 team.

"That can be frustrating," admits O'Rourke, "but then again, I could never stand in the way of someone who wants to play professional cricket and play at the highest level they can."

The current Ireland team is regularly without three or four top players who learned their cricket in Ireland but are now plying their trade away from home. As counties are identifying our top young players and luring them away in greater numbers, the challenge for the ICU now is how they plan to react to that.