Despite missing several of their main players such as Boyd Rankin and Naill O'Brien, not to mention Ed Joyce & Eoin Morgan, who are Irish but play for England, Ireland comfortably won the WCL Division 1 trophy with comfortable wins in all their matches.  Just a few days ago, they came to within 30-35 runs of beating Australia and recently in a ODI against the full strength West Indies in West Indiesi, they lost off the last over Bangladesh, who have everything served to them on a platter just don’t have the hands to pick it up & eat it.  

It is ironic that despite having everything that Ireland doesn’t  - A first class structure, Test status, a well defined calendar with numerous Tests & ODIs against full members, heavily paid professional contracts for their cricketers, all their players being available for all matches, no one poaching their players, and more than a decade worth of such benefits, they have made very little progress.

On the other hand, Ireland, have to cook everything themselves and they still are able to eat it easily.  They don’t even have test status, get only 2-3 ODIs against full members in a year, only 5-6 players are professional & that too due to county cricket, missing at least 2-3 players in every match including even those against full members, and having England poaching their players

Yet, we have Bangladesh losing to teams like a Sussex 2nd xi by 140+ runs and also to Ireland by 7 wickets with 5 overs remaining while Ireland wins comfortably against them, almost without breaking a sweat.  If the ICC had any logic and guts they would demote Bangladesh from Test status immediately and promote Ireland to Test level. This is crucial for Ireland, who otherwise may turn into another Kenya, i.e. headed to cricketing oblivion.  The explanation given by the ICC for not giving Kenya test status in 2003 & 2004 when that issue came up was that Kenya didn’t have any young talent coming up & that they had failed to qualify for the 2004 u-19 World Cup.  The fear of yet another Afro-Asian country with full voting power was also a factor.  Ireland don’t face any of these problems, as they have a lot of decent young talent coming up.  The biggest issue they have is England poaching their players, like England did when Zimbabwe were not yet a Test nation, or during the time South Africa was a Test pariah. 

In terms of cricket biggest difference between Ireland and Bangladesh is their mentality.  After Ireland lost to Australia by only 39 runs, Irish websites like cricketeurope Ireland, there weren’t any happy Irish fans around.  Even the Irish players were disappointed and everyone was sad that Ireland did not win. The players right from the 1st ball played with a single goal in their mind - beating Australia.  When they failed, the post-match reaction showed that. Even though they won many hearts all around the world, they themselves were not satisfied. Compare that to the Bangladesh mentality, they play for respectable defeats against the big teams. they seem to win only 1 out of 20 matches and are quite happy with a few brilliant performances like a Tamim Iqbal 100, a Shakib al-Hasan 5-wicket haul, etc.  The wild celebrations and hype on Bangladeshi cricket websites after the recent one-off ODI defeat of a jaded England side, highlighted this defeatist attitude so unlike the positive mentality of Ireland. 

Some may say that Bangladesh are simply suffering from the constant trauma of being whipped mercilessly in Tests and ODIs.  There may be a grain of truth in that, and so it makes all the more sense for them to be given a break, especially at the Test level, and for Ireland to be given a chance to prove they are better suited to play at that level. 

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