Cricket Ireland this evening named a full strength squad for their forthcoming ODI\u2019s against Canada at Clontarf next week.
\nTrent Johnston has recovered from a knee injury and joins the English county based players for the games on Monday September 19 and Tuesday 20th (10:30am start).
\nIreland coach Phil Simmons welcomed the news from ICC that there will be two automatic places in the 2015 World Cup for the sides which finish first and second in the ODI league, which has already begun.
\n\u201cIt certainly gives all the one-day games in the league some extra spice, and there\u2019s sure to be some high pressure games as the league progresses. We\u2019ve gotten off to a good start beating Namibia twice, and we\u2019ll be looking to add to that with wins against Canada. We\u2019ve tried to schedule the games to give ourselves the best chance of having everyone available, which isn\u2019t always easy.
\n
\n\u201cI like experience in my squad as everyone knows, and it\u2019s no surprise that it\u2019s the World Cup squad, with the exception of Andre Botha. We\u2019ve been boosted by the return of Trent, who always gives the squad a lift by his very presence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Veteran all-rounder Johnston has endured an injury plagued campaign, but is looking to end the season on a high: \u201cI had the cortisone injection two weeks ago and the knee has been a lot better since then. I\u2019ve a lot more mobility, and I\u2019m due to start bowling again in the nets tomorrow while the Icup game is going on. I\u2019ll be building up my workload as the week progresses, and I\u2019d be pretty confident of playing next week.<\/p>\n
“Having said that, I\u2019ll probably still have the operation on my knee on the 29th of this month. If that goes to plan, I\u2019ll be back in full training in December ahead of the tour of Kenya and the T20 World Cup Qualifiers in UAE in mid March.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the decision to award two World Cup places to the top two sides in the ongoing ODI league, Johnston was full of praise for the ICC: \u201cI think they\u2019ve got it spot on. The beauty of a league means that more often than not the best two sides will emerge on top. I don\u2019t think that was necessarily the case at the ICC Trophy in South Africa in 2009. There\u2019s always the fall back for the countries that don\u2019t make it with the additional two places at the qualifying tournament in Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ireland are in action in a four-day game against Canada which gets under way in Rathmines tomorrow at 10:30am. You can follow the action ball by ball on www.irishcricket.org or www.cricketeurope.com<\/p>\n
The Ireland ODI squad for the games with Canada next week is as follows:<\/p>\n
William Porterfield (captain) (Warwickshire), Alex Cusack (Clontarf), George Dockrell (Somerset), Trent Johnston (Railway Union), Nigel Jones (Civil Service North), Ed Joyce (Sussex), John Mooney (North County), Kevin O\u2019Brien (Gloucestershire), Niall O\u2019Brien (Northants), Boyd Rankin (Warwickshire), Paul Stirling (Middlesex), Albert Van der Merwe (YMCA), Andrew White (Instonians), Gary Wilson (Surrey).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cricket Ireland this evening named a full strength squad for their forthcoming ODI\u2019s against Canada at Clontarf next week. Trent Johnston has recovered from a knee injury and joins the English county based players for the games on Monday September 19 and Tuesday 20th (10:30am start). Ireland coach Phil Simmons welcomed the news from ICC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2277,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276\/revisions\/2277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}