England vs Ireland: Latest batting collapse leaves hosts on the ropes as Irish eye historic victory

The ECB sent round a press release on Thursday morning announcing it was extending its All Stars programme for children aged between five and eight who wanted to try cricket for the first time. And if you can get yourself down to Edgbaston for 11am next week, then that would be a big help.

Well, can you think of a better idea? Two episodes into the new season of England Test Cricket – the popular cable television drama with a likeable cast that occasionally stretches the bounds of credulity – it’s clear the producers have really pushed the boat out this time round. As a viewer, you frequently find yourself shaking your head, wondering if a character really would do something that stupid.

There may yet be a final twist in this particular storyline, as England nurse their precarious lead of 181 into the final day. But on the whole, it’s fair to describe this series as one of the most underwhelming yet: an entirely avoidable shambles, brought on by a combination of stubbornness and blithe complacency. At least the watching Theresa May, at Lord’s with some of her former cabinet colleagues, will have felt right at home.

It was a hot day at Lord’s. Brutally hot. Too hot. The sort of day where you just want to lie on the sofa in your underwear listening to Kinks records, drifting in and out of consciousness. The heat hung like a bad memory, licking its way into the recesses of your clothes, weighing your every thought. And so there was a sort of double heroism to the way Ireland - Test cricket’s coldest, wettest nation – managed to rouse themselves and turn around a game that appeared to be melting away from them.

At 171-1, with Jack Leach and Jason Roy hewing England into the lead and Ireland’s sweat-soaked bowlers beginning to run out of ideas for the first time in the match, it appeared that England had dropped the curtain on Wednesday’s embarrassment. Within an hour, though, they were 194-5, their makeshift batting order – consisting of a tailender as opener, two openers at No3 and No4, a No3 at No5 and whatever Moeen Ali is supposed to be these days – again shredded by a mixture of impeccable discipline and late movement.

As evening fell, as Ireland’s keeper and slips closed in, England had once more found themselves in a game with which they were not entirely familiar: less a full-throttle Test match and more a Division Two championship game, populated by 75mph dobbers and county misfits, milking the juice from the pitch like water diviners. Perhaps it was no coincidence that it was England’s big-ticket players – Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow, Moeen Ali – who looked in the greatest discomfort.

And so to their stylistic advantage Ireland added bundles of skill. Mark Adair’s working over of Root, probing away on an immaculate length before finally drawing him miles down the pitch and getting him caught in the slips, was perhaps the best example. You may not have heard of Adair before this game: he played two first-class games for Warwickshire before being released back to Irish domestic cricket a couple of years ago. Now he has a lower Test average than Muttiah Muralitharan, Sydney Barnes, Malcolm Marshall and virtually every other great bowler you can think of.

It feels anomalous, of course, and on one level it is. But on another, it makes perfect sense. This is what was always liable to happen, after all, when one side’s biggest game in years was another’s intermission music, sandwiched awkwardly in between the two biggest cricketing events of the year. For Ireland, everything has been building up to this game. For England, everything has been building away from it.

On the biggest stage of many of their careers, Ireland once again walked taller, and now find themselves on the brink of a sensational upset. And we should be frank about just what an upset this would be. In South Africa’s third Test, they were bowled out twice for under 100 by a second-string England side (WG Grace and others were simultaneously playing a Test against Australia). In Zimbabwe’s, they were crushed by a middling New Zealand side. In Bangladesh’s, they were smashed all around the park by Zimbabwe. New Zealand took 26 years to record their first win. If Test cricket is a tough club to break into, it’s often proved even tougher to crack once you’re inside.

This is Ireland’s third Test, and they may even be slight favourites to win it. This generation has waited more than a decade to show what it can do. They’ve done so patiently and uncomplainingly, on scant resources, while their golden generation has matured and ripened, while they scrabble desperately to build a domestic structure and a talent pathway worthy of the name. Whatever the result, this has been a resounding triumph for them: an object lesson in taking your chances, however they come.