Consistent performance at Donnington Grove Golf Club in Newbury will see him join 20 players for the next stage in Spain
Australia, in their tour opener, were on the ropes as non-Test nation Ireland reached 80 without loss, chasing 232 for victory, after just 11 overs in a one-day international at Clontarf here on Thursday.
But medium-pacer James Hopes finished the Irish resistance with a career-best five wickets for 14 runs as the hosts were bowled out for 192.
Australia won by 39 runs with eight overs to spare after they’d made 231 for nine in an innings where wicketkeeper Tim Paine, only on tour because of an injury to Brad Haddin, alone made more than fifty with a knock of 81.
“It was good to play the Irish because they are a pretty good team,” said man-of-the-match Hopes.
“We have another practice match on Saturday (at Lord’s against a Middlesex side due to be captained by Australia great Adam Gilchrist) and we know a five-match series against England is going to be different to the seven-match series we played last year when we beat them 6-1 (in England).”
However, Ashes holders England will be buoyed by last month’s World Twenty20 final win over Australia in Barbados and Hopes, 31, added: “They have a bit of a different team, they are coming off a Twenty20 win and they are playing in their own backyard.
“I’m sure they’re backing themselves to beat us.
“If you add Kevin Pietersen back into their team — he wasn’t there last year — I think they are going to be naturally more aggressive.
“We’re going to have to get better because if we bowl like we did at the start and the English team get into a position like the Irish team did, they probably would have put us away.”
Had Ireland batted out their full 50 overs they would have likely caused one of the one-day upsets of all-time.
“I think they needed 150 and they were only two down and we were thinking they only had to go at less than four an over, and if they bat to the end they were going to win the game,” Queensland’s Hopes admitted.
“That made it pretty simple in our eyes: we had to bowl them out.”
Ireland knocked Pakistan out of the 2007 World Cup and frustrated home captain William Porterfield was disappointed not to have added Australia to the list of notable Irish scalps.
“We had them right on the back foot. It was ours to lose and we let it slip,” he said.
Ireland remain the top ranked cricket team outside the Test elite and Hopes said: “I think for them to get better they’re going to have to play the bigger teams more than every four years (at the World Cup).
“But they’re going well and it’s a slow process: if you go back 30 years you had Sri Lanka who struggled for 15 years before coming through,” added Hopes, a veteran of 78 one-day internationals.
“The ICC (International Cricket Council) is learning from that and they’re going to give the Irish every chance to establish themselves before they throw them to the dogs.
“Every time they play a Full Member country, they’re not disgracing themselves, they’re putting on a good show and giving teams a good run.”
Bangladesh — beaten by the Irish at the 2007 World Cup — are the next Full Member or Test nation to face Ireland in Ireland with two one-dayers in Belfast on July 15 and 16.
The England-Australia series starts at Hampshire’s Rose Bowl on Tuesday.
Consistent performance at Donnington Grove Golf Club in Newbury will see him join 20 players for the next stage in Spain
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