Australia vs Ireland highlights: International Cricket, warm-up ODI scores

An undermanned Australia begin what is being seen as a squash One Day tour of South Africa that they will struggle in with a warm-up match against Ireland in Benoni. Join The Roar for live scores from 6pm (AEST).

While this series may not be as important as Australia’s last one in Sri Lanka, or their upcoming home summer of cricket, their squad selection has still raised plenty of eyebrows.

Giving players an opportunity who deserve it is one thing, but it’s questionable why all of the Australian big guns had to sit out, especially from their pace attack which resembles one you might see in the Matador Cup or Sheffield Shield.

Even their most ‘experienced’ pace bowler Scott Boland has played only a handful of international matches, and whether he really deserves his spot back is questionable.

Joe Mennie, Chris Tremain and Daniel Worrall are the other quicks in the squad, and with the exception of Mennie, it’s hard to see how they were under consideration.

For that reason, all-rounders Mitchell Marsh and John Hastings, along with young spinner Adam Zampa are going to carry a lot of burden for the bowlers and to keep the score down.

While they might do it against Ireland, don’t take that as the gospel for the rest of the series once they play South Africa.

The batting line-up though hasn’t been overly weakened, but it will be interesting to see how they respond to a lot of extra pressure. South Africa is a place where a lot of runs tend to be scored in the shorter forms of the game as is, so the pressure on Australia’s batsmen throughout is going to be intense.

Their opponents in this warm-up game, Ireland, will once again be led into battle by wicket keeper William Porterfield. The Irish took on South Africa a couple of days ago and so should be better prepared for this match despite going down by 200 runs.

Porterfield is also coming off a duck, so is due for a score and will be joined by the likes of Paul Sterling and Kevin O’Brien who both scored runs against South Africa.

Ireland will need to get away to a good start, and if they can achieve that and score runs against Australia’s inexperienced attack then they could pull off a massive upset, but it’s hard to see it happening.

The key for them, besides scoring enough runs to be competitive, will be to use the new ball well with Craig Young picking up three wickets against South Africa but being very costly.

The nations have played four times, with Australia winning three and the other a non-result.

Prediction
Australia are probably going to struggle badly throughout the tour when they play South Africa, but for a match against minnows Ireland, they should get the job done.

It should be a lot closer than people would expect.

Be sure to join The Roar for live scores of this warm-up One Day International in Benoni from 6pm (AEST) and don’t forget to drop a comment in the box below.

Follow Scott on Twitter @sk_pryde