There is a club cricket vibe to Irish cricket, and it’s not just their cable-knit sweaters. They have a few players who don’t fit the athletic cricketer jelly mould. Boyd Rankin left the field minutes after play for what we can only hope was because he forgot to put his wallet in the valuables bag or he hadn’t gone to the toilet. Mark Adair was fielding at third slip and then opening the bowling. Stuart Thompson pretty much a club cricketer before his Test debut. Tim Murtagh’s batting, which was mostly done from square leg.

And before they came out to bowl Tim Murtagh was bowling on his own in front of the members, like a clubbie opener waiting impatiently for the rest of the eleven to turn up.

And Murtagh’s bowling also feels that way. He’s fast medium by club standards, by medium by international. Quicker than Sourav Ganguly, slower than Scott Styris. When you are up high, the slips look weirdly close; it makes the entire square look shrunken, like its kids cricket. He has this lean when he comes in, and this terry Test match technique that makes him look like a wind up cricketer. And then the ball is delivered and it’s so slow. The slips honestly feel too far back.

And Murtagh might be a wonderfully talented bowler, able to land the ball pretty much where he wants with good swing and decent seam movement, but he looks as deadly as a door snake.

The fact is — as brilliant as Irish cricket has been for the last decade and a half — most of their cricketers are average first class players or well beneath that. And many of their best players are now either past their best or retired.

So there will be games where they get sat on, like say, getting bowled out for 85.

One moan from cricket fans at the thought of new nations coming into Test status is what it will do to statistics. When the Mali women scored only six runs in their match against Rwanda, you heard the same thing. New nations are supposed to struggle, do you know two cricketers who smashed developing countries, George Lohmann and Donald Bradman. Lohman averaged 5.8 against South Africa, Bradman 140 against India, West Indies and South Africa (New Zealand did well to avoid him).

But in three Tests Ireland’s held their own. They fought back well against Pakistan after a disastrous start and made a game of it, improved in their second innings against Afghanistan and then took the best of the conditions against England. What if they hadn’t though, what if the predictable happened, and Pakistan rolled them cheaply twice, Rashid Khan spun them out in India and Jimmy Anderson had been bowling to them on the first morning here at Lord’s.

They’d be more or less the same side, some club players, some first class and a bunch of fans suggesting they should have never got Test status. Days like today make that moaning tougher.