What's hate got to do with sporting rivalry? Trust me, there is nothing that gladdens a Celtic heart more than sticking one up the English.
I'm sorry, you lost me there. That's absurd.
Jamaica and Antigua (for example) are young countries with homogeneous populations, whose united cricket team was created for them by their foreign masters. A Great Britain team would come with the baggage of the long history we have together and our different cultures.
Why should 1,000 years of brutal imperial misrule come into anything? The past is past - as I've said 1,000,000,000,000 times in the South Africa quotas thread, bad things in the past are best put behind us, and the best way to do this is for the English and Irish to work together, as equals, in as many things as possible. Same in South Africa with "previously disadvantaged" and non. Causing more injustices to the current generation won't undo any of the wrongs of the past. There's no way to do that, sadly.
Compared to India, the British Isles are puny in terms of multiculturalism. But Indians have no problem working together for India. Therefore there's no reason English, Scots, Welsh and Irish couldn't do so as well.
Went to my school. According to my brother, he bowled quick off spin and made batting look insanely easy. He seemed to score a 50 every week for the school.
It shouldn't, but it does. Can't do much to change it in the short term.
Ireland don't want to be part of Britain. They got independence in 1922 and left the commonwealth in 1948. Why would they want to join a cricket team with a country they haven't been part of for 60 years?
The difference there is they're the same nationality. English and Irish aren't.
So the whole "not actually wanting to play together" counts for nothing?
Nationality is nothing. Barbadians and Jamaicans aren't from the same country either.
If they didn't want to so badly no Scot or Irishman would ever have turned-out for England since 1997. The fact that they have suggests it's not really a great problem.
Really, what does it matter why they came together? As long as they play together, the argument that Ireland and the UK have different political boundaries so must have different cricketing ones is worthless.
As are England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
Because in football and rugby union it's always been done that way; in cricket it's always been done as The British Isles. I feel that cricket accross the Isles would work best if there was one national team.
Why does it? Even now I'm assured by the relatively few Irish lads I know that hate of the English is something mostly confined to older generations and generally thought of to be an obselete attitude.
So the British Isles marching forward in unity is a "bizarre nationalistic notion"?
Think I've already addressed this:
It's more to do with sporting loyalty than political boundaries. "Ireland" as a political entity doesn't exist. It's a sporting construct in the same way as the West Indies is. "Ireland" also put out a united team in union. They play together because they want to, but if they wanted to play as Eire & Northern Ireland that would be fine too.
Hardly. As stedly points out:
Well, no, it hasn't. Great Britain as a team used to compete in the Olympic football competition (won 3 gold medals) and the British & Irish Lions still tour every 4 years. Despite these supranational teams, the constituent parts of Great Britain/The British Isles still desire to have their own national teams and play against each other. Why should cricket be the exception?
That's crap. Do you really think Ireland & Scotland never conceived of international recognition until the ICC flashed its garter belt? Wales have also had ambitions in this area at some point or else why would they have competed in the qualifying tournament for the 1975 world cup?
And I think not. As I say - the fact that they have played for England shows that they really don't mind. If they did, nothing would make them do so.
And it'd also be fine if they wanted to play as part of the British Isles.
So? Cricket in Ireland and Scotland at the current time has some additional strength (admittedly more due to imports than anything else, but still, there is an amount of increased interest) than it has in the past, and while it'd be utterly foolhardy to think that this would ever amount to international-standard sides, it could help hugely in developing a better "England" team.
There's no reason England and Ireland shouldn't play each other internally if they fancy; England and "Wales" played a few games a few years ago as you remember. But Wales remain, even in official terms, part of the cricket entity most commonly known as "England". It'd be best for everyone concerned if Ireland and Scotland did the same. If time could be found, obviously an internal tri-series might be good fun.
When did I say that? I said I$C$C can pretend they're expanding cricket by pretending Ireland and Scotland are "new" places, when they're nothing of the sort, the way Afghanistan or China (for instance) would be. And this annoys me; had The British Isles decided in 1997 to form one, rather than three, Cricket Boards, that'd have been 2 teams less (or 2 even worse ones) at WC2007 and I$C$C would have had less excuse to continue this "we're expanding cricket" nonsense.
I know they did (this was before they became officially - and correctly - recognised as part of "England"). Let's hope we don't get Glamorgan breaking away and trying to form their own Test team any time again, though.
I had no idea Joe Scuderi was still playing. Remember him breaking through as the "next big thing" in Australian cricket in the late 80s/early 90s with Qld and SA practically falling over themselves to sign him up, but he never became the player it was hoped he would.
Probably they both could having italian heritage. But to play they need to spend 150 days in Italy and in that time help the development of cricket in Italy. The problem is that they would never accept playing for Italy, they're still young and good batsman, playing even one innings for Italy (for very very little money) would make it nearly impossible to ever play for england.
The point is that if he can qualify for Italy he could qualify for the EU team.
Never knew Pettini had Italian blood in him!