Anyone who has been following Ireland’s World Cup campaign through Sky Sports or BBC radio’s Test Match Special coverage can’t have failed to be impressed with the contributions of former Ireland captains Kyle McCallan and Alan Lewis, who have both been great additions to their respective media teams.

Affable and articulate, they’ve both been brilliant ambassadors and advocates for the Irish cricketing cause during the course of their illustrious playing careers – each having retired, 12 years apart, as their country’s most capped player at that time, an overall record Kyle still holds.  They’re both great guys who have been worth their weight in gold to Irish cricket and their unsurprisingly smooth transition to broadcast media punditry has served as a reminder of the big boots current captain William Porterfield has had to fill in leading the green revolution in these exciting times.

Not only is the Donemana man the on-field general who has to keep Ireland moving forward in the face of heightened expectation and demands: these days the men in green are flying the flag for all associate nations as the established elite make moves to shut them out of their cosy club.  He has taken to the leadership role in impressive fashion on and off the field and is now very evidently at home in a position which he was earmarked for from an early stage having led Irish age-group teams throughout his development – another endorsement of this country’s youth system.

Selected as a relatively raw opener for the last World Cup, controversially so in some eyes at the expense of the then recently-deposed captain Jason Molins – who was axed after leading Ireland to the promised land – Porterfield played second fiddle to the Australian-born Jeremy Bray, who scored a century in the tie with Zimbabwe, though his fantastic fielding didn’t go unnoticed.  Four years on and the 26-year-old, who recently moved from Gloucestershire to Warwickshire, is very much the main man – an experienced professional player who has scored heavily and at a reasonable rate at the top of the order for Ireland in the past couple of years and is clearly comfortable in his own skin as captain.

In spite of his rapid-fire delivery in an accent which more than the wider world can sometimes struggle to decipher, Porterfield isn’t an obviously charismatic character who loves the limelight like Lewis and McCallan.  He hasn’t a natural aura about him like Molins and lacks the physical stature or worldly-wise Aussie street cred of veteran slugger Johnston.

But Porty strikes you as a ferocious competitor, deceptively self-confident, mentally tough, hungry to learn and a proactive captain who will try things and follow his instincts.  Clearly coach Phil Simmons is influential too, but the skipper can take personal pride in how Ireland have impressed people with their approach and tactics in this tournament – being branded innovative rather than formulaic for, for example, keeping more men inside the circle than they were required to at times against England and of course taking the batting powerplay early in the same match.  It was thanks mainly to Kevin O’Brien that that move reaped remarkably rich rewards but you suspect some supposedly superior sides would have missed the trick altogether.

Getting out in unfortunate fashion to the first ball of Ireland’s innings prevented Porterfield from making a captain’s contribution to that incredible chase against England but he bounced back with a very fine 75 in difficult circumstances four days later against tournament favourites India when the loss of two very early wickets at the other end encouraged the home bowlers and a fanatical crowd of 40,000 alike.  The hard edge developed in North West club cricket as a youngster still serves him well but he has had the drive and discipline to take his talents to the bigger stage and make the most of them.
Involved in the run-out of Niall O’Brien after a superb partnership of over 100 for the third wicket, William would want to have stayed until late in the innings and may feel he gave his wicket away to the first ball after drinks but by then he had already set his team well on their way to another respectable performance and result.  He’ll have an important part to play in tomorrow’s crunch clash with West Indies as the men in green go for the win which would give them a great chance of making the knock-out stages.

So much has changed since Lewis left the stage all too early in 1997 having laid firm foundations in partnership with coach Mike Hendrick, or indeed since the ill-fated ICC Trophy trip to Toronto four years later when McCallan carried the can for the failings of others.   The big breakthrough of World Cup qualification finally came and Adi Birrell’s boys spectacularly gatecrashed the party by upsetting Pakistan in Jamaica on St Patrick’s Day 2007 to qualify for the Super Eights of that tournament.

By beating Bangladesh they made their mark on that second stage of the last World Cup and, having booked their place in the Indian sub-continent for the current tournament, the pressure has been on to continue trail-blazing especially with players now on full-time contracts, the continued participation of associate nations in the tournament unfairly threatened and Ireland no longer being surprise packages.

By beating big near neighbours England, Ireland have already provided an exceptional encore to the Caribbean heroics of 2007 and delivered a ringing endorsement to the Simmons-Porterfield ticket as this team writes its own chapter in Irish cricketing folklore.  If they can claim the scalp of the Windies for the first time a a major tournament, quarter-final qualification seems set to follow and that would be another amazing achievement.

In recent years, giantkilling in top tournament has trumped anything which went before but there were a number of stepping stones in the earlier part of last decade which paved the way for future successes – not least Ireland’s impressive chase of near 300 to beat the West Indies at Stormont in 2004 when the then skipper Molins led the way with 66 of a first wicket stand of 111 with Bray.

Any attempt to airbrush out the contribution of Molins alongside Birrell before Johnston took over would represent regrettable revisionism but, like Jason, Trent was the right man at the right time to take the team forward and now the Porterfield factor is helping raising the bar still further for Irish cricket.  We may be a small cricketing country but Ireland has been blessed by a high calibre of on-field leaders, with Lewis and McCallan having become equally effective cheerleaders in retirement!