WITHOUT the World Cup, Irish cricket would still be rudderless and, increasingly, the World Cup would be poorer for the absence of Ireland.

So Ireland’s qualification for a third World Cup has been greeted with considerable relief at Cricket Ireland’s headquarters on the northern outskirts of Dublin.

Asked what it means to the game here to have a team at the one-day international showpiece every four years, Cricket Ireland chief executive Warren Deutrom said: ‘I guess, as the old phrase goes, “only everything”.’

Qualifying with two games in hand will have produced approving nods of respect around the cricketing globe because it reiterates how far Ireland have come.

They are so firmly established as the strongest nation outside the Test elite that it only remains for the ICC to explain just how long they expect Ireland to rule their world without allowing them into a brave new one.

For now Ireland will be going to the Antipodes for the 2015 World Cup, having made sure of it on Tuesday in Amstelveen when they stretched their unbeaten run against the Netherlands to 13 games.

Every time Ireland win a tournament among the ICC’s ‘associate’ nations they knock harder on the door of Test cricket, which CI have identified as the goal for the year 2020.

But the one-day showpiece will do very nicely for now, as Deutrom acknowledged that the heroics of the O’Briens, the Johnstons and Joyces at that tournament are the reason Irish cricket is no longer cash-strapped and irrelevant outside its own walls.

‘The 2007 World Cup is where the modern chapters of Irish cricket were written in terms of our profile, our success and where the real growth of the sport started,’ said Deutrom.

‘Our success over Pakistan and Bangladesh really brought the game home, not just to the wider world of cricket but also to the Irish public in a way that it never really had done beforehand.

‘That was cemented by qualification for the 2011 World Cup and it went into overdrive after beating England, obviously, and that one victory probably did more than anything else to convey the sense that we are here to stay as a cricketing nation, not just a flash in the pan.

‘Those victories generated the interest, the interest generated the profile, the profile generated the investment from government and the likes of our sponsors RSA, who renewed their four-year association with us after the 2011 World Cup.

‘So from a profile perspective, a media coverage perspective, Government interest, commercial and financial support, nearly all of that has been generated by the World Cup.

‘Therefore it is of absolute necessity that we qualify for the World Cup, and I think all along the expectation the Irish players is that they wanted to qualify in first place, because anything less would be a disappointment.’