Ireland swap Bangladesh Test for T20I

Cricket Ireland (CI) has decided against playing a Test match during their home series against Bangladesh in May, citing financial constraints, Ireland's RTE reported on Monday.

The Bangladesh fixture would have been just Ireland's second home Test following a defeat to Pakistan in summer 2018. The match against Bangladesh has now been downgraded to T20I and a planned T20I series against Afghanistan was cancelled altogether.

CI chief executive Warren Deutrom said that the body had faced 'a number of financial headwinds' in 'the transition from an Associate Member to the operations required of a Full Member'.

CI had also faced financial problems during their maiden home Test against Pakistan as rain washing out the first day caused a cash-flow crisis that meant Deutrom had to give the board a short-term loan of €100,000 later that year.

Ireland had been expected to receive International Cricket Council funding of $40m in the period 2015-23 but Deutrom said: "With an allocation amounting to less than half of that of Zimbabwe, our expected revenues from the ICC Funding Model for Full Members have not been realised.

"The first area of prioritisation for 2020, has been white ball cricket over red ball," Deutrom said. "Like all Irish cricket fans, we would love nothing more than to be competing on all three fronts – Tests, ODIs and T20Is. Unfortunately, our financial constraints have led us to cut the home Test match next year.

"As the Test does not form part of the World Test Championship, the one-off match lacks context. For effectively a 'friendly', the expected costs for hosting the Test would be over €1 million, with little expectation of creating revenue streams to cover the costs of hosting."

As well as the T20I series with Bangladesh, Ireland will also host T20I series against New Zealand and Pakistan next summer.

"We were proud to become world cricket's 11th Test-playing nation and have a long-term commitment to that format of the game," Deutrom said. "However, we have been very careful in our approach to Test cricket and understand that it is a long-term proposition to build up a competitive side in the long game, and will require significant investment in permanent infrastructure before we can make regular Test cricket financially sustainable.

"As a result of all of this, the board has had to make some tough decisions on the fixtures and ground allocations to ensure we can fulfil as much of the home programme as possible."