Ed Joyce

Well, everything seems to be happening before the mega World Cup. Ed Joyce who is also a part of Sussex, and played the WC 2007 for England, will now feature in the 2011 edition for the Irish! Strange but true! Joyce has played 50 matches for Ireland between 1997 and 2005. But, then on residency grounds he qualified for England and made 17 appearances for England. The last of these was against the Lankans at the Caribbean at the WC 2007. He never made it to the English test side though!

The Irish squad has 9 players who had an experience at the 2007 WC. Captain William Porterfield, Trent Johnston, the O’Brien brothers-Niall and Kevin, John Mooney, Andrew White and Joyce will form the experienced backbone of the team. The Irish team miraculously exiled Pakistan from the 2007 edition.

And, the coach Phil Simmons, a former WI international, was all in praise for the team. “I like the balance of the squad. As with most Irish teams of the past few years, there are quite a few all-rounders, and that gives us plenty ofoptions in all departments. This squad contains a lot of experience with nine having played in the 2007 competition – I am sure that is more than most teams,” he said.

“We may have lost the surprise factor, but we have earned the respect of the cricketing world through our efforts. We’ve reached the Super Eight phase of both the World Cup and the World Twenty20 – there’s no reason why we can’t make the latter stages yet again,” he added.

Irelandhave a pre-WC training camp at Dubai on Jan 28, after which they would also play two warm-up matches against NZ and Zimbabwe in Nagpur. Ireland have been drawn in Group B at the World Cup alongside Bangladesh, India, England and Netherlands, South Africa and West Indies. Their first match is against Bangladesh at Dhaka on 25 Feb.

Squad: William Porterfield (capt), Andre Botha, AlexCusack, Niall O’Brien (wkt), Kevin O’Brien, George Dockrell, Trent Johnston, Nigel Jones, John Mooney, Boyd Rankin, Paul Stirling, Albert van der Merwe, Gary Wilson (wkt), Andrew White, Ed Joyce. Coach: Phil Simmons (WIS).

Tags: Cricket, Ed Joyce, England, ICC Cricket World Cup 2011, Ireland, WC 2011, World Cup, World Cup Squad