News

DUBLIN – Cricket Ireland has today announced the appointment of Portas Consulting as the independent body to undertake the previously announced performance review following the Ireland Men’s T20 World Cup campaign. To support Portas, former Ireland Men’s head coach Adi Birrell has agreed to provide cricket expertise and insight about Irish cricket to support the review process.
After the Ireland Men’s team exited the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup in the first round last month, the Board of Cricket Ireland endorsed an independent review to be undertaken post-tournament to assess a range of areas, including:

• the preparation period for the World Cup
• an analysis of performance during the tournament
• the quality and availability of cricket facilities in-use across Ireland
• selection policies and procedures
• coaching structures currently in place at the national level
• the administrative side of our operations to ensure Cricket Ireland is necessarily evolving to meet the needs of its status as a Full Member

Portas Consulting is a global sports advisory company that specialises in bringing a strategic perspective to sports bodies and an in-depth knowledge of the global sporting landscape. Portas is currently undertaking a post-Tokyo Olympics review for Sport Ireland, and amongst its portfolio of clients has worked on several strategic projects with the England & Wales Cricket Board.

To complement Portas’ high-level sporting expertise, it was considered important to engage a cricket expert with knowledge of the Irish cricket structure and wider Irish cricket environment to ensure any review was relevant to the Irish context. Adrian ‘Adi’ Birrell, current Head Coach at Hampshire Cricket and Boland Province in South Africa was formerly the Head Coach of Ireland Men between 2002 and 2007, and has agreed to take on this role.

Ross McCollum, Chair of Cricket Ireland, said:

“We welcome the participation of Portas Consulting, who will lead this process, and indeed our thanks to Adi [Birrell] on making himself available to support Portas. Adi not only has hands-on insights and experience of the Irish cricket context, but has kept abreast of our development as an organisation over the years since he left Ireland.”

“We are satisfied that with Portas, the process will be both efficient and timely, and we’ve assured them that the Board, the High Performance Committee and management will be available to support the review team with any data or other information relevant to their work.”

Warren Deutrom, Chief Executive of Cricket Ireland, said:

“It is crucial that we get this right, and have the right people with the necessary expertise to undertake the review. As those who have undertaken such exercises know, the work can be admin-heavy and involve much time and resources relating to data collection, individual consultations, report-writing and data review. We believe having a team like Portas leading the project, with Adi providing the technical expertise and insight, will enable a swift but extensive process.

“My management team will be available to support where required, and the process will broadly look at two phases – event preparation and the event itself. The approach will involve assessing the data from management surveys (adapted from those previously used by the ICC to assess performances of Members at major ICC events), and one-on-one interviews with key on- and off-field people.

“Reviews are a routine part of our post-World Cup processes, and complement the regular work of our High Performance Department in their work in continuously improving their operations. The report from this review will be presented in the first instance to the High Performance Committee, before going to the Board. We will release a summary report at the conclusion of the process – which we hope will be by the end of the year.

“With an extremely busy period coming up for our national squads, we are keen to see any accepted recommendations implemented as swiftly as possible, or raised up the priority list for funding over coming years.”

Craig Easdown
An update on the Cricket Ireland Review
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