Ireland's Andy McBrine praises England's new attacking approach to Test cricket

​The 30-year-old, along with fellow North West Warriors duo Craig Young and Graham Hume are part of the Ireland squad who take on England at the home of cricket in a one off test match, which gets underway next Thursday, June 1st.

McBrine knows it's going to be a difficult encounter against a red hot England side, who are using the encounter as preparation for this summer’s Ashes series against Australia.

In fact, the Warriors skipper believes England have taken test cricket to a whole new level, since Brendon McCullum became their coach in 2022.

‘Bazball’ refers to the new brand of aggressive cricket that England has started to play in Test cricket since McCullum became the coach of England in June last year.

The Bazball theory states that a team should play attacking cricket in Test cricket instead of depending on defensive techniques, with skipper Ben Stokes also encouraging the front foot approach.

“They’re obviously a top class team and the way they’ve played over the last 18 months they’ve taken test cricket to another level,” insisted McBrine.

“We know it’s not going to be an easy task, but everyone is really looking forward to it and we’ll obviously give it our best shot whenever we’re playing against them.

“The way I describe the way England are playing test match cricket at the minute, is that they are playing like it’s a 50 over game.”

The talented bowler, who admits there’s a large travelling support from the North West making the trip to London for the test match, believes that Ireland will have a game plan to try and stifle England’s all out attacking style.

“We know it’s going to be tough to try and stop that but I'm sure we’ll have a talk over this week,” he added. “We’ve got a good analyst in Scotty (Scott Irvine) and he’ll probably give us loads of notes, so we’ll really come prepared leading into Thursday’s first day of the test match.

“I think there’s a few making the trip over and the last time we played at Lord’s there was a good Irish support. The weather is supposed to be quite good and that’s always half the battle.”

In 2019, Ireland were on course for a famous victory when bowler Tim Murtagh finished with incredible figures of five wickets for just 13 runs in his nine over spell in their first innings, as England were bowled out for just 85 runs, unfortunately Joe Root’s men came storming back in the second innings with both bat and ball and eventually won that clash by 143 runs.

But after playing in that previous test, which took place some four years ago, McBrine knows how special the game is against the old enemy.

“It’s obviously a massive opportunity and all the lads are looking forward to it,” he explained.

“It’s not every year that this fixture comes along, so for it to come along this year, it’s very special.

“It has been a change for us, as we played three tests back to back over a three or four week period in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka and those tests come after not playing one test for a number of years, so it was a change for us.

“We showed during those test matches we kept getting better and better. We probably weren’t ourselves a wee bit in our second test in Sri Lanka, but we were delighted with how we progressed and especially in the final test, we were delighted with the way we batted.

“Doing well against quality teams in their own conditions, it was obviously very tough, but I felt the way we stuck at it for the three test matches, we can take a lot from those matches.”

The left handed batsman did well with both bat and ball during those test matches as the Indian subcontinent conditions seemed to suit him and he believes the longer format of the game is something he and team-mates are now really starting to get used to.

McBrine feels that test match cricket is all about being mentally prepared, as you need to be fully concentrated for long periods both when batting and fielding and the Donemana native believes Ireland will continue to improve with the more test matches they play.

He also feels that you can’t let set-backs put you off, because playing at such an elite level you are always going to face top drawer performers with both bat and ball.

“I’ve obviously know that I can bat and while there’s obviously pressure coming into a test match, I feel test cricket means you've the opportunity to spend a lot of time at the crease,” he conceded.

“There’s no rush with test match cricket, so it’s all about batting time, which kind of suits me a wee bit as well.

“We’ve always talked about how we know that we’re going to get good balls at test match level, so we have to be mentally strong as well.

“As I said you’ll probably get a good ball and you can’t let that bother you, it’s about playing each ball at a time.

“It just goes to show you once you do get in during test match cricket there’s a few big innings out there and the lads showed that in those three tests against Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

“We also know that we’re more than capable of competing at test match cricket level.”