Andrew Balbirnie calls for 'bridging gap' for young players into senior Ireland side
- Published
Balbirnie's Ireland did not reach the Super 12s stage of the T20 World Cup after group stage defeats by Sri Lanka and Namibia
Ireland captain Andrew Balbirnie says the senior team will only improve if the country's development sides are provided regular opportunities to play.
The skipper believes Ireland Wolves, the men's A team, must play more in order to provide a "bridging gap".
The senior men are currently in Florida for their white ball series against the USA, which begins on Wednesday.
"It's difficult, we probably have 20 players in this country who are good enough to play for Ireland," he said.
"Maybe a bit more, 22. We're not blessed with the numbers that England have."
"The big thing for me is we need that bridging gap. We need Wolves cricket, we need to pick the best players from inter-pro cricket and put them up against high quality cricketers on a regular basis.
"There could be 10 or 15 guys out there that could be world beaters that we don't really know about because they haven't really been put into situations against some really good teams."
In recent years Ireland have delivered some impressive performances in one day cricket, most notably in historic wins over England and South Africa, but have struggled to find consistency.
In 2021 they lost three-game series against Afghanistan and the Netherlands before crashing out of the T20 World Cup in the opening group stage.
Balbirnie believes more competitive fixtures for the Wolves would better equip some of the country's younger players for the challenge of international cricket instead of moving straight from the inter-provincial set-up into the senior side.
The Wolves have played just four one-day games since the start of May this year.
"We need to play ideally two home series in the summer and then a couple in the winter either side of Christmas and I think that'll have a huge knock-on effect on how the senior team performs," Balbirnie said.
"We need to find out about these players as quickly as possible rather than find out about them in international cricket - picking them after a couple of good scores for their inter-provincial team and putting them in an international environment against South Africa.
"You might find a couple of gems, but we need to bridge that gap and for me that's Wolves cricket. "
After drawing their T20 series, Ireland and the USA will meet in a three-game ODI series before the Irish travel to Jamaica for another ODI series against the West Indies in January.